Darkness and Light
by sol invictus
Summary: Young Jedi caught up in the middle of the Rebellion's struggle against the Empire, Zack and Cody must also be wary of the Dark Side's siren call. TSL/StarWars crossover
1. Chapter 1

Zack's strike was parried and he quickly found himself on the defensive, the green glow of his lightsaber moving furiously to block the molten copper colored blade as it whirled around him. He backpedaled, his defense becoming more and more desperate. He deflected an overhead slash and was staggered by the force of the blow, regaining his balance just before the next strike. Zack was tiring and it showed as he backflipped out of the heat of battle to buy himself a few seconds. He landed on one knee a few meters away, trying to force more oxygen to his muscles through ragged breaths while his adversary stood nearly perfectly still and calm.

He launched himself forward with gritted teeth before he could be put on the defensive again, slashing upward and spinning to deliver an attack at his opponent's feet. Both were blocked, easily, and despite his best efforts, Zack was moving backwards once more. He rapidly deflected three strikes and ducked a fourth that would have decapitated him before again jumping out of reach.

Zack could feel the Wookiee's heavy gaze as it looked through him. He took a handful of deep breaths and tried to get his heart rate under control. A shake of his head sent an hour's worth of sweat flying off into the damp riverbed. He ran his free hand back through it and waited, bouncing slightly from foot to foot with his lightsaber in the guard position.

"_Your mind is muddled. Your thoughts and attention are everywhere but here_," the old Wookiee finally said, the exasperation clear in his gruff growls. "_You must concentrate_."

"I'm sorry, Master Ishalka."

"_Do not be sorry. Instead, clear your mind and focus on what is at hand_." He studied his pupil and spoke again. "_When you are ready_."

Zack took a deep breath and did his best to empty his mind before taking two long strides to rejoin his Master. His blade flashed as he spun but the majority of his strokes seemed to find nothing but empty space while the rest were batted away harmlessly. Zack's frustration began to grow as he pushed his attack. The Wookiee was just so _fast. _He bit down on his irritation and slashed again before charging at his Master. He swung high and then chased it with a backhanded swipe as he passed only to nearly have his lightsaber knocked from his hand for his trouble. Zack huffed, lunging in again, before slamming to a dead stop against a wall of air.

"_Calm your emotions, Zack_," Ishalka said with a furry hand held out in front of him. "_You must not fight with your anger clouding your mind. Serenity is your ally. Only when you are serene will you be able to immerse yourself in the Force and allow it to guide your actions_."

"I'm sorry, Master."

"_Once more_," the Wookiee said and took up a ready position.

Zack blew his breath out and stepped forward. His green blade lashed out high and low and followed his strikes with a spinning kick. Ishalka blocked the strikes and rolled with the kick, nodding as he stepped back in front of his student.

"I can still sense your negative emotions. You must overcome them," he said as he went back on the offensive. Zack parried and dodged and picked his spots to throw in some strikes of his own. They separated after a long series of blows, Zack spinning his lightsaber in front of him and the Wookiee once again patient and waiting.

"_The Force is your ally, Zack. You must allow it to aid you but you must also be mindful_."

Zack felt a miniscule ripple through the Force and ducked a shoulder and slid out of his robe as he felt a strong tug on one sleeve. The empty robe zipped through the distance between then before dropping in the dirt. The tip of his lightsaber had scorched the fabric as it passed and they both watched as it smoldered on the ground.

"Nice one, Master. Now try this!" Zack jumped and somersaulted over the Wookiee, landing with his lightsaber primed for a winning blow, but felt an invisible,giant hand plant itself in his chest and shove him back across the field. He scoured a furrow in the dirt and came to rest on his back. Zack shook his head and saw his lightsaber rolling a short distance away, illuminating the ground. Zack scrambled to his feet and called the weapon back to his hand when his Master spoke.

"_Enough_." Ishalka deactivated his lightsaber and hung it from his belt. "_You forget yourself and all that you have learned when fighting, Zack_. " Zack hung his head and tucked his lightsaber back in his robes. "_You fight with the speed and agility of youth but still do not augment it with what you have been taught. Had you been focused, you would have foreseen the simple shove I gave you and easily dismissed it_." Ishalka shook his head.

"I'll do better, Master. I promise." The rebuke stung.

"_I know you will. But not tonight_." Zack was about to protest but was silenced with a stare. "_You have much to meditate on before we resume tomorrow. Go, gather your things. I will collect your brother and we will eat_."

He turned a shaggy face to the sky after Zack departed. The heavy banks of clouds were finally spilling over the horizon and a chill breeze began whipping at his robe. He could smell the scent of the rain and increased his pace, stepping out of the riverbed and climbing the small hill to the clearing where Cody was practicing.

Ishalka crested the hill and slowly approached his other student. Cody had one hand outstretched and the Wookiee was impressed with what he saw. If Zack would only put half the effort into his training that his brother did...no, it wasn't fair to judge one off of another. Ishalka dismissed the thought as uncharitable and stopped a discrete distance away, watching, hands clasped behind his back.

Specks of mist began joining the beads of sweat that were collecting on Cody's forehead as he concentrated. The large stone spun slowly in the air a few meters from him while a smaller stone orbited around it. A third stone hung in the space between the first two and twitched jerkily.

"I can't," Cody said as the third stone fell to the ground and rolled to a stop a short distance from his feet. The remaining stones sagged but Cody kept them in the air.

"_You can_," the old Wookiee told him.

Cody squeezed his eyes even tighter and set a determined look on his face. After a foggy exhalation, the fallen rock rose from the damp soil and took its place between the spinning and revolving stones. He took a deep breath and the stone slowly began to settle into a polar orbit to complement the other's equatorial orbit. He kept the system going for another few seconds before it became too much and all three fell. Cody collapsed to the ground and wiped his face.

"I'm sorry, Master," he said as his breath condensed around him.

"_Do not apologize_," the Wookiee growled as he helped Cody to his feet. "_You did an admirable job pushing yourself as far as you did. You have control far beyond what I did as a student_."

"I'll try again. I know I can do better." He reached out a shaky hand and the larger stone hopped back into the air

"_No, that is enough for tonight. I believe that what passes for the warm season on this planet has passed. We should join your brother inside before the weather catches us_."

"I won't argue, Master," Cody told him as he dropped the rock. He wrapped his robe tighter around himself and fell into step beside the Wookiee. The temperature had dropped from pleasant to cold in a matter of hours. Cody was about to comment further when he stopped and peered questioningly at their small dwelling. "Zack feels...agitated. I can sense it all the way from here."

"_He is. His mind is clouded and he feels frustration for his poor showing in our duel_." The idea of Zack doing badly in a duel, even with their Master, stunned Cody and it was evident on his face but he remained quiet as they walked. "_The two of you both have vast potential but his is still very raw and mostly unharnessed even after all these years of training. Were times as they were before the Empire slaughtered the Jedi, he would be assigned another Master in hopes that a different teaching style could aid him_." Ishalka grew quiet and Cody could feel the Wookiee's thoughts drifting back decades.

"I'll try talking to him," Cody offered as they neared the gravel path that led to their door.

"_Thank you, but no. It is not your place as his fellow student. I shall do it later tonight after he has had time to relax and calm himself_." Cody nodded and said nothing as he walked inside, just beating the first drops of freezing rain.

A short while later they sat around a small table with full plates in front of them as the storm pounded around them outside. The food, mostly ration cubes with a few vegetables they'd harvested from around their camp, was far from gourmet but the young Jedi devoured it. Master Ishalka waited until long after his students were finished and the dishes cleaned before speaking.

"_What troubles you, Zack_?"

"Huh?" Zack replied in surprise as he spun his chair away from the grimy window.

"_What has caught your attention so these days_?"

"The Rebellion, Master. The future."

"_Ah. You wish to leave and go aid the Rebels_."

"I do." Master Ishalka could feel the thoughts bubbling in his student's mind and waited for Zack to continue. "We've been hopping from backrocket planet to backrocket planet meditating and lifting rocks while millions of beings are risking their lives for freedom. I just feel like we should be doing our part."

"We are doing our part, Zack," Cody interjected before Ishalka could wave him silent. "We won't be much help to the Rebellion if we aren't trained. Each day we stay here or on some other world, we grow stronger."

"And ever day we spend here, quadrillions of beings that can't defend themselves suffer under the Empire's rule. We can help them now. How much stronger do we have to be before we join the fight? How many worlds have to be destroyed like Alderaan before we're ready?"

Color had risen into the cheeks of both boys by now, Master Ishalka noticed. This disagreement had surfaced many times before and there was never a resolution, only a temporary truce. "_We have had this discussion before_," the Wookiee said to both boys.

"I know, Master, but it seems more important now. More urgent."

"_Is that the future you spoke of earlier_?"

"I...think so. It's a very vague feeling, like something huge and dark is reaching out for us."

"_The Empire has long arms and farseeing eyes, Zack._"

"It's more than that, though. At least I think it is. Cody's always been better at that than I am. It feels like whatever it is is lurking in the shadows and I can't quite see it," Zack offered after a bit more thought.

"_Perhaps we have spent long enough on this planet_," Ishalka said after a moment.

"Do you think someone saw us and tipped off the Empire?" Cody asked.

"Doubtful," Zack replied. "Master Ishalka has never gone to town with we've never trained outside during the day."

"_It is possible but not important. If they are coming, it won't matter how they discovered us_."

"They are coming," Zack told them.

"_You are certain_?"

"Yes, Master. Positive."

"_Then we must leave. Gather what you can carry and forget everything else._" The Wookiee stood and the twins flew into action. Each boy busied themselves by stuffing their few belongings, mainly clothes and a few small trinkets they'd collected over the years, in space-beaten old sacks. Cody had just sealed his when his head snapped up, his gaze focused somewhere far outside the room's wall.

"Master!" he exclaimed suddenly. "They're here."

"_I feel it, too_," the Wookiee said as his hand reached into his robes and pulled out his lightsaber. "_Quickly, to the ship_." He led the way through the early light with the twins close behind him, his large strides carrying him to the small entrance just as he heard the rumble of a shuttle very close overhead. The passage was lit by patches of glowing lichen and the group moved as fast as they could through the twists and switchbacks. Ishalka was nearly bent double at the waist and he could feel the time slipping away as he pulled himself along.

They burst into the cavern from the passage to see what had to be at least a dozen white-clad Stormtroopers advancing from the cave mouth and another four figures buried deeply in dark red robes just inside the cave.

"_Inquisitors_," Ishalka grumbled as he ignited his lightsaber.

"We've been looking for you for a long time, Ishalka. Why don't you come with us? We have so much to discuss." He paused and the twins could almost hear the cruel smile in his voice when they stepped out into the dimly lit cavern. "It seems you have company. Younglings? Or are they your students?" Zack and Cody could feel a cold gaze settle upon them. "Oh, they are, I can feel them. Join us and I will spare their lives."

"_Never, you traitors_," he bellowed. To the twins, "_get to the shuttle and prepare it for flight. I will hold them off._"

"Cody can do that by himself, Master," Zack said, his green blade igniting in a familiar _snap-hiss. _"I'll help you."

"_No, you will do as you are told. Go_!"

"C'mon, Zack, let's go," Cody said as he grabbed his brother's sleeve and pulled him along. They were halfway to the shuttle when the Stormtroopers opened fire and Cody's blue blade flared to life and joined Zack's in scattering the blaster bolts. Three of the Stormtroopers fell from reflected bolts while another handful were suddenly thrust back across the cave by a wave of Ishalka's hand.

"_Now go_!" he yelled as he advanced to place himself between the shuttle and the Imperials.

Cody punched in the shuttle's security code and the ramp started sliding down. He vaulted up and into the shuttle before it was finished and Zack was close on his heels. They dropped their packs in the cargo bay and raced to the cockpit and flung themselves into the chairs. Two sets of nimble hands raced over buttons and switches and the shuttle's systems began the slow process of coming online.

"Repulsor coils coming online. Life support online. Engine diagnostics eighty-seven percent...Ninety-five...Done. Both in the green. Initiating start up sequence." Cody's fingers flew over a keyboard at least as old as he was as he entered commands in their navigational computer. They'd practiced this many times over the years and every step came as second nature to both of them. "Come on, hurry up." He turned his attention to another display only to have it yanked back to the nav computer. "Oh not now. This is not the time."

"What?" Zack asked, not looking up from his own screen.

"The nav computer's faulted and won't load any data. I have to reset it and hope it comes back up."

"How long will that take?" Zack asked as he entered a flurry of keystrokes.

"Assuming it works? Sixty seconds if we're lucky."

"What if we're not lucky?"

"Well, we'll have two choices. We either orbit this planet for the rest of our lives, which will probably be very short if there's more Imperials around or we jump blind. If jump blind, we could end up on Coruscant or in the middle of a star or anywhere in between."

"Let's hope we're lucky."

"Forty five seconds," Cody counted down as the nav computer worked through its restart.

"We might not have that long. Look!" Zack pointed out the front viewport. The Stormtroopers were no longer moving but the four hooded figures were. Almost in unison, four arms appeared from beneath robes and four shafts of red light blazed forth. "I'm going to help him," Zack said as he jumped from his seat.

"Zack! Get back here-" Cody called after him but the only response he got were his brother's footfalls echoing all the way to the cargo bay and the ramp.

"Don't force us to destroy you, Ishalka," one of the hooded figures said. "We only desire to talk." Long fingers pulled the cowl back and a thin, dark face was revealed

"_Save your breath. I have no desire to talk to someone who betrayed our Order._"

"Lord Vader is very persuasive, Ishalka. Incredibly so. And the power I have now," the gaunt man rolled his head around on his shoulders as if he was relishing Vader's gifts. "It's like nothing I ever imagined when I was at the Temple."

Zack ended his dash at his Master's side and could immediately feel the evil and malice pouring from the four. It made his skin crawl and he could feel it pressing against him from all sides, demanding entry and offering incredible power.

"_You should not be here. This is not your fight_."

"It is my fight." Zack took an involuntary step back, staggered under the oppression of the evil power.

"_That is the power of the Dark Side, Zack_," Ishalka told him when he could feel his student being buried under it. "_Fight it_."

"It's...strong," was all Zack could answer with the dark power crushing him.

"_Focus and allow the light to lift it from your shoulders._" Zack did as he was told and could feel the dark cloud dissolving. "_Consider this the end of your training_."

"It will be the end of something," the unmasked figure said as he approached. "If you will not join us, you will die."

Cody watched from the viewport as six lightsabers clashed, looking up from his systems every few seconds. Dizzying blurs and multicolored sparks filled the air of the cavern as he waited for the shuttle to finish engine start-up. "Come on, come on," he muttered as he was torn between rushing out to help his brother and Master or staying to finish what he started in the cockpit.

Zack felt like he never had before as the battle progressed. He had finally fully immersed himself in the Force and he could feel each blow coming almost as soon as his opponent conceived it. When an attack finally came it seemed to be in slow motion and Zack was prepared to counterstrike immediately. He reveled in the power. After batting three ragged strikes away, Zack lashed out high at his enemy's head and followed it with a barrage of strikes that put the darksider purely on the defensive. Zack finished his mini-offensive with a spinning strike from his lightsaber's pommel, catching his opponent in the face and shattering bone.

The darksider, stunned and bleeding and with one hand over what remained of his nose, stumbled sideways on weak legs. Zack regarded him for a fraction of a second in the Force and saw the hatred still burning within the injured being even as Zack was preparing for the killing blow. He felt the figure searching through him and watched a small grin spread across the darksider's face as Zack finished him with a cleaving cut from shoulder to hip. He was puzzled but put it aside for the time being.

Cody saw his brother strike the darksider down just as the familiar thrum of the engines reached his ears. "Finally!" he exclaimed as he worked his fingers over another series of switches. He looked up and saw that the two groups had disengaged for the moment, seeming to be studying each other. Cody was puzzled and about to turn his attention back to the controls when he saw another group of Stormtroopers enter the cave and open fire. Their blades moved like the wind and began bouncing the blasts away.

"No more games. This ends now, Jedi." The red blade was extinguished and the hilt was stashed deep in the red robes. Two hands were extended and bolts of jagged purple lightning arced across the distance. Master Ishalka caught the lightning on his blade but his brother wasn't as experienced or lucky.

Cody pounded his fist on the viewport and screamed as he watched Zack's body convulse. "No!" he watched his brother twist on the ground until his attacker was forced to defend himself from a charging Wookiee. The lightning ended and the red blade reappeared again, moving furiously against the Wookiee's blows. The Stormtroopers opened fire again and Ishalka faced an impossible fight.

The two darkside accomplices each reached out a hand and the dark energy lashed out against Ishalka again. One was sent spinning off into a wall but the other kept up the attack. Ishalka's body contorted as he fell to the cave floor, his lightsaber rolling from his huge hand.

"No!" Cody screamed again when he saw his Master writhing under the onslaught. He was out of the pilot's chair before he realized it.

"_Save your brother and leave here, Cody_," Ishalka said in his mind. "_I will hold them, buy you time_." Cody started to argue but stopped when he felt his Master in the Force.

"_You are right, my time is not long but yours is. Your destiny does not end here. May the Force be with you_." Cody's fingers left his lightsaber and he raced to his brother and quickly worked his limp body over a shoulder.

He looked back as he shuffled to the cargo ramp to see Ishalka raise both burned hands to the roof of the cave and yank them down, pulling huge chunks of rock from the ceiling and sending them cartwheeling toward himself and their enemies. Light flooded the cavern as the rest of the ceiling was pulled down, crushing everything in their path and forming a wall between the remaining Imperials and the shuttle.

Cody felt his Master's death as the rocks fell. His eyes grew moist and he bit back a sorrowful cry but he forced himself to push that away for the time being. There would be time to mourn his loss later. Cody dashed inside the shuttle, hammering his hand on the emergency close button as he passed, and made his way to the cockpit. Once Zack's smoking body was secured in the co-pilot's seat, Cody fastened his own harness and fed maximum power to the repulsor coils.

The shuttle screamed upwards and through the hole and out into the empty sky. Cody pointed the shuttle's nose up and began accelerating. The ground quickly shrank beneath them and the blue sky began to darken as they passed through the planet's atmosphere and out into the blackness of space.

"Oh, not good," he muttered as he saw the silhouette of something very large, white and angular coming around from behind the planet. He pushed the throttles to the stops and opened the engines fully, hoping that they could get out of the planet's gravity well before the Star Destroyer could close the distance and train its guns.

"Attention transport _Ilar Drifter_, this is the Imperial Star Destroyer _Vengeance_. You are ordered to heave to and prepare to be boarded," Cody heard through the speakers as the Star Destroyer hailed him. "This is your only warning," the message continued before going ominously silent. Cody ignored it as he scrolled through the nav computer's list of available jumps.

Display lights lit up on his threat board as the Star Destroyer moved within firing range. "Targeting lock...targeting lock," the computer repeated ceaselessly in his ear as he watched the minimum distance to the nearest jump point scroll down. "Come on...come on..."

Huge green bolts of pure energy lanced out from the Star Destroyer at Cody and his small ship. He threw the vessel into a corkscrewing dive just as one turbolaser flashed by close enough to make all his gauges surge and the ship's intercom assault him with loud static.

"Too close!" Cody said as he yanked the ship back up toward the jump point. He found himself almost grinning despite the circumstances. He flipped the transport on its side before rolling inverted and climbing above another round of fire from the Star Destroyer. Something in the cargo bay crashed back to the deck as he leveled out again. "Almost there. Jumping in three...two...one...jump!" He glanced over at his brother's unconscious form and pulled the lever. The stars outside the viewport elongated and then vanished as they entered hyperspace.

_So there it is, chapter one of my Suite Life/Star Wars crossover. Hopefully I've hooked you with this even if you aren't as huge a Star Wars fan as I am. If you are, don't worry, I won't be rewriting the Original Trilogy. The twins (and the other characters that will show up in time) won't be fighting Vader or blowing up Death Stars. They have their own story to tell in the vastness of the Star Wars Galaxy._

_If you aren't as huge a fan, that's okay, too. I'm not going to super-nerd the story with all of the minutiae of the SW galaxy unless it's important to the story (or interesting enough to mention) and I'll note things accordingly at the end of the chapter. For example, Wookiees can't speak 'Basic' (English) but they can understand it. Also, if you have any questions feel free to ask. That said...Thanks for reading and let me know what you think!_


	2. Chapter 2

"There is no emotion, there is peace. There is no ignorance, there is knowledge. There is no passion, there is serenity. There is no death, there is the Force," Cody whispered to himself as he felt the ocean of sadness from Master Ishalka's death start to break through the dam he'd built around it and begin to wash over him. He unbuckled his harness and leaned back in the pilot seat and looked at the ceiling of the shuttle until his eyes overflowed.

Cody repeated the Jedi code again but found little solace in the mantra. He wiped his eyes after a third repetition and exhaled a long, hitching breath. Cody shook his head and tried to throw off the numb feeling that was creeping over his body. Master Ishalka had been the guiding force in his life since Cody's earliest memories and now he was...gone. Taken away by the Empire while defending the two of them. Small embers of anger flared to life deep inside his body but Cody instantly doused them, refusing to allow the death of his master to be defiled by dark thoughts.

He focused on his breathing and soon enough, his mind began to clear. The pain was still very fresh, very raw, but it was no longer overwhelming him. The ocean of despair was draining away and he felt himself regaining control. "There is no death, there is the Force," Cody said to himself in a much steadier voice than he had moments earlier.

He scanned across the instrument panel and found everything well within the green before turning his attention to his brother. Cody spun his chair to face Zack and reached out with the Force. His vital signs felt strong but Cody could sense the residual pain from the lightning and feel random muscle fibers spasm. He probed a little deeper and found Zack was drifting far below consciousness. "Probably for the best right now," Cody said as he reached over and pulled the top of Zack's robes open. Cody gasped.

Raised bloody welts crisscrossed his brother's body, seeming to explode out from his left side. Cody traced one with a hovering finger, starting from just under Zack's chin and stopping only when the scarlet line disappeared under the bunched fabric at Zack's waist. He whistled and wished he could trade places with his brother. Zack's condition wasn't grave but he would need immediate attention.

Cody stood and released the straps from Zack's chair and slid an arm under his shoulders. Zack screamed in his sleep and Cody pulled his hand back and found it streaked with red. He took a step back and raised his hand, calling on the Force to gently lift Zack from the chair and into the air. He walked slowly backwards out of the cockpit and down the hallway, passing their shared cabin and feeling a distant stab of pain as he passed Ishalka's. He turned on his heel and backed into the small medbay.

Cody settled Zack onto the medical table and began the slow task of peeling the charred robes and pants from his brother. He lost track of time but eventually Zack was free and the ruined clothes were laying in a pile. He was nearly in shock as he surveyed Zack's body from head to toe and saw very little healthy pink skin. Cody pulled a container of bacta and a roll of bandages from a cupboard of medical supplies and began applying the salve to the thin fabric.

Their small freighter had only a minimal medical bay so there was not enough bacta to cover all of his brother's wounds so Cody had to choose where it would do the most good. Zack's unconscious body flinched in pain as Cody, as gently as possible, laid each of the strips along the worst of the damage. It would be up to Zack to use the Force to heal what the bacta couldn't. Once he finished, Cody pulled a sheet up to Zack's chin before stepping out of the room and into the corridor.

He stood outside the medbay for a few moments, immersing himself in the Force and sensing Zack, before checking his chrono and returning to the cockpit. When they fled from Reboa, Cody had plotted a short jump to put space between the Imperials and themselves and the time to revert to realspace and plot another jump was quickly approaching. He settled into his seat and waited for the time hack to count down to zero. When it did, Cody pulled the lever and they dropped back to realspace, on the outskirts of the Bosph system and hopefully tens of billions of kilometers away from their attackers. He did a quick sensor sweep and found no other vessels in his area and slightly relaxed.

While they couldn't be tracked while they were in hyperspace, there were only so many places that Cody could go from a planet as deep in the galactic fringe as Reboa. He would need to make at least one more jump to put the Imperials even further off his trail and get himself closer to the major space lanes. He called up the nav computer's data to scan through a list of possible nearby destinations. Ventooine seemed to be the best of his limited choices and Cody punched its coordinates into the computer and waited while it plotted the route. Less than a minute later, Cody was moving again, heading for the jump point designated by the computer. He engaged the hyperdrive and felt the familiar lurch as they accelerated.

Zack's eyelids fluttered open and he almost immediately cried out when his mind became aware of his injuries. It took three tries before Zack could calm his mind enough to be able to call upon the Force enough to numb the pain that was flaring through his body. With a deep breath he struggled to sit up and saw his upper body and arms covered with patches of bacta-covered bandages.

"Why am I in the shuttle?" he asked himself as he pushed himself off the table. He felt the deep, rhythmic vibrations of the hyperdrive beneath his feet. "Where are we going?" Confusion reigned in his mind as he tried to organize the pieces of the last few hours into a whole. They were attacked on Reboa, he was certain of that. He'd gone out to help his Master while Cody prepped the ship for lift off but things became hazy after that, and judging by his injuries, apparently not in his favor.

Zack glanced in a mirror and inwardly grimaced as he saw his reflection. He touched a particularly red mark on his neck and yanked his hand away almost instantly. He turned and looked over his shoulder and saw more of the same on his back and down the back of his legs. Zack had to restrain himself from shattering the mirror and the image it showed.

He took a medical robe from a drawer and gently slipped it over his body. Zack knotted the front of it and reached out with the Force and panicked when he at first felt no one in the ship. Cody was sleeping, he noticed when he tried again. Deeply sleeping. But where was...No, he knew. He felt it the instant he expanded his senses. There was no trace of what Zack had always considered a _heavy _presence in the Force. None of the warmth he always felt even when he was being corrected by the Wookiee.

A cyclone of differing emotions swirled through him as he tried to make peace with the fact that Master Ishalka, the closest thing to a parent he'd ever known, was gone. Zack sighed and bit his lip and pushed the feelings away away, deciding that not dealing with any of them was the best way to deal with all of them. Zack picked his lightsaber up from the edge of the table and allowed measured footsteps to carry him from the room as painlessly as possible.

He made a stop in the small quarters he shared with Cody and carefully pulled on a new set of clothes, doing his best to not gasp as he brushed against the worst of his injuries. Zack attached the lightsaber to his belt and began his walk to the cockpit. He stopped once on the way as the pain rose past a point he could easily control with the Force. Zack gritted his teeth and started moving again, performing a balancing act between controlling his pain and accelerating his healing with the Force.

The lights were dim in the cockpit when he entered and he was barely able to see his sleeping brother through the glow of the instruments. He was about to wake Cody and get the missing parts of the story of their escape but he saw the chrono and stopped. He had been asleep for nearly sixteen hours but Cody could have just fallen asleep. Zack settled into the co-pilot's seat and allowed him to rest.

He was busying himself with the nav computer, looking over their possible next moves, when Cody began to stir. Zack watched his eyes pop open in surprise and unconsciously pulled his robes closer around his body to hide his injuries. "How did it happen?"

"What?"

"How did Master Ishalka die, Cody?"

"You shouldn't be up yet, Zack. You need to rest."

"I have rested. Now please tell me."

"This can wait until you're better."

"It really can't. I need to know."

Cody leaned back in the chair and Zack knew he'd won. "After you went down, he went after the darksider that was hitting you with the lightning and forced him to defend himself instead of attack you. After that..." Cody swallowed hard and looked out the viewport. "After that, the numbers were too much for him. I rushed out when I saw you fall and he ordered me to pick you up and get out of there. He sacrificed himself to save us." Cody felt his eyes becoming moist again and he wiped them with the backs of his hands. Zack looked away.

"You were right," Zack said after long minutes of silence. "We weren't strong enough. I wasn't strong enough."

"We did everything we could in the time we had."

"No. You might have but I didn't. I was a fool."

"We're still padawans, Zack. Barely fourteen standard years old."

"It doesn't matter. Never again." Zack repositioned himself in the chair to face Cody. "What's our next step?"

"The next step is finding somewhere that you can rest."

"No."

"Yes," Cody said in a tone that said the issue was not up for debate. "If you don't rest, you won't heal. What happened to you is a hundred times worse than being shot point-blank with a blaster."

"I'm fine."

"No you are not. To be honest with you, Zack, I'm surprised you are even awake much less moving around. To be bluntly honest, I'm a little surprised you are even _alive_. Your body was ravaged by the dark side energy, both inside and out. I can feel it. I can feel how much you're using the Force to cover the pain. The bacta can only do so much. You need rest and time for the Force to work its healing ways. If you don't get it, you could still die." Cody felt himself beginning to lose his cool and forced himself to calm down. When he had control again, he continued. "So our next step is going to be to find somewhere we can lay low for however long it takes you recover."

Zack pondered his brother's words. "You're right. Where?"

Cody had been expecting more resistance and it momentarily threw him off. "We'll be in the Ventooine system in a few hours," Cody said as he pulled up a display of the galaxy's northern quadrant. "Ventooine could work but there's more action nearby than I like. If we make another jump from there we could hit quite a few systems." He touched the display and the area he highlighted expanded.

"Carosi," Zack said almost before the screen had finished reformatting.

"Carosi? Where is...Ah, right there," Cody said after Zack pointed it out. "Why Carosi?"

"I'm not sure," Zack replied. "It jumped out to me as soon as I saw it."

"The Force?"

"It felt like it. Pull it up and see what the computer knows about it."

Cody did just that. "Not far off the Hydian Way, no major settlements anywhere in the system. That's odd...ah, that's why," Cody said as he read on. "The star went red giant thousands of years ago and destroyed the inner half of the system. The outer planets emptied before it happened and the colonists never returned."

"Sounds about as out of the way as we're going to find."

"It is," Cody agreed. "I'll make the calculations, you go back to bed and rest. If you need a pain killer I'll see what we have in the medbay. Got it?"

"I won't need the drugs but I got it," Zack said reluctantly. Resting was the last thing he wanted to do at the moment but he got up and started walking back to their cabin. "Oh, Cody? Thanks," he said as he left the cockpit.

"You're welcome," Cody replied.

Zack sank into his bed and tried to settle his mind but the emotions he had pushed aside earlier returned and destroyed his clarity. Grief and immense sadness rushed into him, quickly followed by anger and thoughts of vengeance. "That's not the Jedi way," he said to himself through the tears. It took time but Zack was finally able to calm himself enough to enter into a healing trance.

Almost a full standard day later Cody dropped their ship back into realspace at the far edge of the Carosi system. He performed an immediate sensor sweep and saw nothing but empty space anywhere nearby. He set a course to take them into the system and kept his eyes on the sensors should anything suddenly show up. Five minutes passed and they had just passed the orbit of the outermost planet when Zack entered the cockpit.

"How are we doing?"  
>"Good so far," Cody said and then glanced over. "Something about this is making me nervous, though. Do you feel anything?"<p>

"No, nothing. Do you?"

"Nothing but a bad feeling."

They continued on, passing three more planets before their target appeared as a distant speck in the display. "There she is," Cody said, "Carosi Six. It was a lightly inhabited frozen wasteland before the star expanded and now it's an uninhabited partially frozen wasteland."

"Sounds absolutely wonderful. I hope our cold weather gear still fits. We haven't used it in a while." Cody groaned aloud, obviously not having considered that.

"It'll fit well enough. Hopefully we won't be here all that long." He glanced over at Zack again. "How are you feeling, anyway?"

"Slightly better." He opened the front of his robes and let Cody look at his chest. The skin had mostly regained its normal color and some of the ugly red streaks were going down. "Walking didn't bother me very much on my way in here."

"That's good," Cody said as he looked Zack over. He almost mentioned the likelihood of some of the wounds scarring but didn't. He could feel Zack's raw emotions underneath his carefully controlled exterior and didn't want to do anything that might disturb it.

Soon enough, they were entering orbit around the sixth planet and Cody began his descent. The planet's poles were encased in ice but there was a wide strip of green circling the equator. "I'd say that's our best bet," Cody announced as they dropped further through the atmosphere. He steered toward the northern half of the green belt.

"Looks like some old ruins ahead," Zack said once they'd descended to only a few dozen kilometers above the surface. "Put her down near the edge of the city or whatever it was."

"Sounds good," Cody answered, his eyes still scanning the sensors since his feeling wouldn't go away. _It's probably just leftover anxiety from the last two days, _he told himself as he circled the remains of old stone buildings. That explanation made sense but still didn't feel quite right. He resolved to be on his guard just in case.

They landed in a clearing a short distance from the ruins and Cody left the engines in stand-by in case they had to make a quick escape. He joined Zack in the cargo bay and helped him into a bantha wool coat and leggings before putting on his own. The suits were a little short on them but still wearable, he noticed. Cody zipped up and pulled a pair of small snub-nosed blaster pistols from a locker and handed one to Zack. He hit a button and the ramp lowered. A cold wind rushed in and made them jump.

"Brisk!" Zack exclaimed as he started down the ramp. He stepped down onto the hard ground and little whirlwinds of snow swirled around his feet.

"I'd call it frigid," Cody replied. "I think we'll be staying on the ship for most of our time here."

"Definitely." Zack led and they took off in the direction of the ruins through clusters of hardy plants. Dozens of stone buildings laid in various states of collapse around them, some the size of small houses and others bigger.

"I think these must have been all buried under the ice and snow until recently, Zack," Cody said into the chill wind.

"Why's that?"

"They'd be a lot more weathered if they were just laying out for all this time."

"How old are we talking about here?"

"Hmm...If I had to guess? Thousands of years. Five, maybe six."

They poked around for another half hour before turning back. The light was beginning to fade and neither wanted to be stuck outside on a cold, unknown planet when darkness fell. Cody was a few steps ahead of him when Zack ran his hand over a large hunk of cut stone. His hand jerked back, from the cold, he initially thought, before he felt something rumble deep in his mind. Zack put his fingers back on the stone and he felt it again.

"You coming?" Cody asked when he looked back over his shoulder and saw he had stopped.

"Yeah, go ahead, I'll catch up in a minute."

"Don't take too long. We don't know what might be hungry and on the prowl around here when night falls." Cody gave his brother one last look and shivered when a particularly cold gust of wind raced by his cheek and down the back of his neck. He pulled his hood's lining tighter and continued on.

Zack touched the stone a third time and felt warmth rush through his hand. He squatted down beside the slab of rock and brushed away a light layer of snow. "What do we have here?" he whispered as he squinted in the fading light. "Runes?" Zack screwed up the corner of his mouth as he tried to remember if he had ever seen anything like them before.

He and Cody were well-versed in a wide variety of subjects, languages being one of the more intensive areas of study that Master Ishalka had put them through, and Zack came up with nothing. The carvings didn't even look remotely like any alphabet he'd seen and that only served to pique his curiosity. He settled in on his knees to reach more of the stone's surface and worked until he'd wiped off as much of the rime of ice and snow as he could.

Zack sat back and looked over what he'd uncovered. Runes covered the stone, arranged in perfectly aligned columns from the top of the stone to where it was buried in the ground. He took a closer look and noticed that the carvings seemed fresh, like they'd been done the previous day instead of however many thousands of years ago. He pulled a glove from one hand and gently ran his fingertip over the edge of one of the runes and it came away tingling.

"What is this thing?" he asked as he slid his hand back into the glove. Zack stared at the stone for a few seconds more before getting to his feet. The temperature was dropping fast and he was beginning to feel the cold seep through his clothes. It would still be there in the morning and hopefully it would be a little warmer while he studied it.

"I was starting to wonder if you got frozen to the ground," Cody called back once Zack had stepped inside and closed the cargo bay door.

"No, I was looking at a stone that had carvings all over it. The only thing I can think of to compare it to would be ancient Bothan but even that isn't close."

"Could be leftovers from some long forgotten colony. There were dozens of colonization attempts that failed for each that succeeded."

"You can take a look at it tomorrow if you want."

"I definitely will."

Once the planet's star was high in the sky the next day, they both geared up for another trek onto the frozen world. Any hopes they had of it being marginally warmer during the day were dashed the moment they lowered the ramp. Zack muttered an old Corellian curse and shook his head as they walked down.

"I'd have hated to have been here before it warmed up," he said as he led Cody to the stone ruins.

"Whoever lived here must not have minded too much," Cody replied. "Or they never went outside." They trudged on for several minutes Zack announced they'd arrived. "This is it?" Cody asked as he knelt down to look over the carvings.

Zack's attention drifted as his brother examined the stone. He expanded his senses and felt something very vague, almost like life, but more elusive. He pulled his goggles away from his face, hoping that he might spot something that the polarized lenses blocked. Nothing. But he could _feel _it. The more he probed the feeling, the more he could sense it opening to him, offering to strengthen him. Just as suddenly as it appeared, the feeling disappeared when Cody spoke.

"I swear I've seen something like these before but I have no idea where. You were right, they have to be ancient but look like they were just cut the other day."

"It makes me wish we had some digging equipment on the ship, you know? Or if Master..." Zack's words trailed off as the fresh pain of Ishalka's death was unearthed in his mind.

Cody laid a hand on his brother's shoulder but said nothing. Zack turned away and rubbed the back of his glove over his eyes and felt the presence he'd noticed earlier return. It was distant and vague and _blurry_ but he could sense it.

"Do you feel anything?" he asked after a few moments. "Reach out."

Cody looked up from the stone and closed his eyes. "No, nothing. Do you?"

"I thought I did but I must be imagining it." Zack frowned and touched the stone, expecting to feel the same tingles as yesterday but nothing happened. He set his hands on his hips and looked out over the clearing. Nothing but frustration.

They explored the area until the sun began to set but found nothing that would shed any additional light on the stone or who had carved it. They returned to the ship and began the long process of warming up with a hearty meal.

Several hours later they had both retired to their cabin for the night. Cody had drifted off to sleep almost immediately but Zack had more difficulty. He tossed and turned beneath the blankets before pulling his robe around himself and walking to the cockpit. He sat down in the pilot's chair and ran his eyes over the passive sensor displays. Everything was exactly as it should be, and the ship would alert them if it wasn't, but something still seemed off to Zack.

He pressed a button and scanned their area and found nothing out of the ordinary. Zack shifted in the chair and reached out with the Force. It was harder than normal since he was diverting part of his concentration to blocking his pain but he managed. Nothing out there. No, there was something. He cocked his head to the side when he felt...what was it? It was similar to before but not quite. He probed again, harder this time, and the only way his brain could describe the feeling was _inky. _

"What in the?" he thought aloud and his hand unconsciously went to his side and wrapped around his lightsaber's hilt.

"I have not felt a presence on this world in a very long time. A very special presence, it seems," Zack suddenly heard in his mind.

"Who are you?"

"A kindred spirit, I believe."

"Jedi?" Zack asked, his fingers finally relaxing their grip on his lightsaber.

"I was. Once."

"What are you doing here?" He looked out through the viewport but saw nothing.

"I died fighting with the Sith here thousands of years before you were born and my essence became trapped by their magic."

"Cody was right," Zack said quietly.

"Who is this you speak of?" the voice in his head asked after a pause.

"My brother. Twin brother, actually."

"Interesting that I can sense you but not him."

"He's sleeping barely ten meters away from me."

"Has he been trained?"

"Probably better than me," Zack admitted.

"Fascinating," the voice said after another pause. "He is invisible to me. You are like a beacon while he is a black hole." Zack experienced what felt like nimble fingers touching him through the Force. "Very strong."

"Not strong enough," Zack said softly once the mental fingers retreated.

"Oh?"

"Our Master was killed because I wasn't strong enough to save him." Zack turned his head down to the instrument panel before relating the story of their flight from Reboa.

"There is still time for you," the voice said after a respectful silence.

"Not very much. We escaped the Empire last time and my brother and I could be the last of the Jedi. There may be no one to train us."

"Do not be so fast to give up hope, young Jedi. My body may be gone but I am still here in the Force."

"You?"

"We shall see but for now you must rest. I shall speak with you in the morning." The presence disappeared and Zack felt Cody just outside the cockpit.

"Who were you talking to?"

Zack turned to see his brother with two blankets draped around him and his hair sleep-tousled. "You didn't hear another voice?"

"No, just yours. You were talking about...you know." He stepped closer to Zack and sat down in the other seat and looked him over. "Are you sure you're okay? Your mind might be a little messed up after everything that happened."

Zack felt Cody's invisible touch creeping through his head. "I told you earlier that I'm fine and I still am," he said, throwing his brother out and slamming and locking his mental door. Cody was shocked and Zack brushed past him on his way out of the cockpit. "Don't do that again." Cody could feel the anger and hurt coming from Zack, like a lick from a cold flame.

_I'd like to blame work and the NCAA tournament for making this chapter take as long as it did. Okay, I won't lie...it was mostly the tournament. Louisville is surprisingly still in it which is awesome since I figured they_ might _win their first game but that would be it since it's been that kind of year.__ On the other hand, Kentucky is also still in it which makes me incredibly sad. And the fact that they played their games in_ our _arena...wow.__ Anyway, I'll cut it here before I go off on a basketball tangent. Thanks for reading and since I don't expect Louisville to beat MSU...the next chapter shouldn't take as long._


	3. Chapter 3

Cody was bundled up against the wind as he crunched across a fresh layer of ice. He had been roaming the tundra for an hour, letting his gaze fall where it may. It hadn't taken more than a few minutes after leaving the area around the ship to discover that there wasn't much to see. Rocks, ice, snow, and the occasional green stand of stunted trees and shrubs to break up the monotony.

_And what is this? _ Cody thought to himself as he bent over to examine the ground. "Tracks," he exclaimed, more than a bit surprised at the sight. They were a centimeter or two at the most, likely some sort of small mammal, Cody surmised, but they were there. He followed them for a moment and saw the tracks disappear into a burrow beneath a gnarled bush. A slight smile crossed his face as he realized they weren't completely alone on this ice ball.

Cody stood back up and continued on his walk, eventually reaching the small clearing near the stones where Zack spent most of his waking hours training. He sat on an uncovered hunk of rock a discreet distance away and was almost immediately mentally assaulted by the emotions flying from his brother. Depression, guilt, and anger intermixed with dashes of acceptance, serenity, and focus whirled around him as if Zack was the eye of an immense storm.

He watched a bit longer before heading back toward their vessel, wishing that Zack would come with him and relax enough to allow himself to mourn instead of burning every second of daylight honing his skills. Zack's constant drive to make himself better and ignore his pain was beginning to worry Cody but each time he brought the subject up, Zack waved it away saying that he was fine and that everyone grieved in their own way. Cody let himself into the ship and stripped off his parka and lined pants. He ran his hands back through his hair and flicked away the sweat that had built up, still expecting to feel the braid in his hair even after having unwrapped it once they'd fled Reboa. It was too noticeable, he had decided. Too distinctive. Slightly wistful, he went to the galley to begin their meal.

The next morning Cody caught up with Zack before he headed to the cargo bay to suit up for another day of fine tuning his skills. He laid a hand on his brother's shoulder and felt a deeply suppressed bubble of irritation pop just before Zack turned around.

"What?"

"Can I look you over before you go out there again?"

"I guess so," Zack tersely replied.

"It won't take long, I promise." He led the way back down the corridor, pausing to let Zack enter first. He didn't like the idea of Zack being outside. Besides the obvious near-zero temperature, something just didn't feel right about the planet. "You could train inside the cargo hold and not have to bury yourself under all that gear, you know."

"I know. I feel closer to the Force out there on the ground. I can't seem to reach it as well inside the ship."

Cody didn't answer but nodded as he followed Zack inside. The door slid shut behind them and silence fell over the boys as Zack began unbelting his robes.

"You are not healing well," Cody said as he looked over his brother's wounds. Zack was sitting on the examination table with his robes open to his waist. Cody touched one of the red stripes that still tattooed Zack's body. "Did you feel that?" he asked when Zack didn't react at all.

"Barely," Zack admitted.

Cody frowned. The lack of feeling might mean nerve damage. "I can put you into a healing trance. It should help."

"No, I'm healing but it's just taking a while. Are we done? It's kind of chilly in here when you're half dressed."

"We are," he said and Zack pulled his robes back on and hopped down. As his brother left the room, Cody lamented his Master's death for yet another reason. How long does it take for dark side wounds like Zack's to heal? Master Ishalka would have known. Cody turned to the medical database and began hunting through the records for the hundredth time, hoping that he'd come across something that would answer his questions.

Cody gave up after half an hour of fruitless searching and closed the terminal down. It had been a week since they'd landed on this frozen rock and Zack's wounds had all but stopped healing. "We're going to go somewhere and get a real doctor to help him if things don't change," he said softly. Zack would fight that tooth and nail but it would have to be done. But why wasn't he healing? Cody leaned against the bulkhead and shook his head. He didn't understand.

A short while later Cody was sitting in the warmth of the viewport as Zack went through his lightsaber cadences a few dozen meters away on the frozen tundra of Carosi. He could sense the Force flowing from and through Zack but it wasn't the usual smooth feeling he was used to. It was...jagged. Rough. Gravel instead of transparisteel. Cody steepled his fingers under his chin as he studied Zack. His movements were strange to Cody and the more he watched, the surer he was that Zack was going through a form that Master Ishalka had never taught them. "Or didn't teach me," he said to himself. They appeared to be based more on brute force and power than simple defense. Was Zack practicing a form he had never been taught? Or was his brother just putting moves together? Cody's brows furrowed as he watched.

It had been almost a week since the tense exchange not a meter from where he was now seated but it felt like years. The brotherly bond that had been second nature to them had become strained and there where times when Cody could barely sense him at all. He could look Zack right in the eyes and not be able to reach him in the Force.

The distancing in the Force was almost as bad as the distance that had come between them personally. The exchange they had in the medical bay a short while ago was the longest they'd shared in the last three days. Cody sighed.

"You have to let go of your anger," he said to himself as he watched Zack levitate a chunk of ice and cleave it in half. Cody had felt it growing day by day and there wasn't anything he could do about it except repeat the same old Jedi maxims about anger leading to the dark side. He knew Zack was hurting emotionally but he couldn't help if he wouldn't talk to him. Cody looked on for another few moments before a yawn split his face. He spun the chair around and went to the galley for a cup of caf.

Restful sleep had been hard to come by since they landed on Carosi. The first had been rough and it had only gotten worse from there. When Cody finally did manage sleep he was visited every night by jumbled Force dreams and would spend many hours during the following day attempting to find meaning. After all his meditation he had come up with very little success. It felt as if something was hindering him, stirring his mind when he most needed it calm, and it worried him.

Cody pushed the rambling thoughts from his mind and reached out with the Force, expanding his senses beyond himself and Zack and over the frozen plains and specks of green. Nothing. Except that was wrong. He knew there was life out there_. _He should feel something. The Force is everywhere. He sharpened his focus and reached out in the direction he'd seen the tracks but still felt nothing. Cody felt vaguely unsettled as he took a sip from his drink.

"Your concern for your brother is touching, admirable even," the spirit said as Zack pushed his body through another set of lightsaber forms, the blade a green blur as it whipped to and fro around his body, "But I believe it is holding you back."

Zack stopped in the middle of his exercise and shut down his lightsaber. He gazed into the middle distance with his brows furrowed. "How exactly is that?"

"In my time, as in yours, attachment was frowned upon by the Jedi Order. If twins were born and both were strong in the Force, they would never be trained together for exactly the reason I have said."

"Cody is what keeps me going," Zack retorted as he reignited his blade and started his form over again. "If it weren't for him I wouldn't be alive right now."

"But I think you would. If he had been stronger, more focused on learning what he needed to understand to survive in your world than trying to understand all the ancient arcana of the Jedi, I feel it likely that you wouldn't have been wounded in your battle with the Imperials. In fact," the voice continued after a short pause, "it is likely that your Master would still be alive as well."

"You can't know that."

"No, I can't. But I feel it is highly probable."

Zack sat on a nearby rock as his mind weighed the odds of the spirit's words being true. He could all but discount them after a moment's thought but couldn't do it completely. They were still there, faint as the shadow cast by his lightsaber, but there.

"I know it is a painful thing to have to consider, Zack, but you would be doing yourself a great disservice if you don't. He is stymieing your growth, purposefully or not. You worry about what he might think, about having to protect him, and your own studies suffer."

"None of this is Cody's fault. None of it. Our Master died and I was injured because of the Imperials, not because of him."

"Why did your Master send him to the shuttle instead of facing them with you?"

"You're going to tell me that it was because Master Ishalka knew he was weak, aren't you?"

"I wasn't going to tell you anything. You told me."

Zack had no words, only simmering frustration. He was on his feet and swinging his blade again. He felt the spirit's presence begin to recede when he paid it no further attention and that was likely for the best. It had already given him enough to mull over for one day.

An hour later, darkness was blooming and Zack had worn himself practicing in order to not have to think about anything the voice had told him. It couldn't be possible, Zack told himself as he started the walk back to their ship. He had heard Master Ishalka praise his brother countless times over the years for his insight, his strength in the Force. He knew better but he still couldn't shake the idea the compliments were only meant to boost Cody's confidence.

And as for Cody having any role in Master Ishalka's death... "No. There is no truth to that," he said aloud but the thoughts nagged at him. What if Cody had been stronger? Had spent more time practicing with the lightsaber instead of spinning rocks? Could the three of them have defeated the Imperials in the cave? Zack felt sadness wash over him as he realized that he believed the answer to that was _yes. _ He took a deep breath before he pushed the button to lower the ramp and used the time it took for it to descend to try to purge the idea from his mind.

Cody was a bit surprised when he felt Zack's troubled mind as he walked on board. He got up and walked down the corridor to their shared room and knocked on the door. "Zack?" he asked softly, "can I come in?" He felt another burst of emotion from inside the room but got no response..

Cody could feel his brother's pain from behind the bulkhead. He wanted to push the issue, probably _should, _but he couldn't bring himself to do it. Cody frowned and put his hands inside his robe and walked back to the cockpit. The battered seats and glowing panels had become his meditating area in the last few days. He lowered himself in the chair and slowly exhaled a deep breath as he tried to clear his mind.

Cody soon dropped into a trance-like state and he reached out into the darkness, focusing his mind on the _nothing _he'd sensed earlier. It was out there, very diffuse, very slippery and hard to get a hold of, but he found it. It felt like a hole in the Force, a void, and the absence made him feel uneasy. His closed eyes squinted and he calmed himself and spread his senses out again in search of the center of the nothing. Cody couldn't pinpoint it but he could sense the general direction. He opened his eyes and looked out on the dark ground.

"What are you?" he asked quietly as he stood up and stretched his limbs. He watched the wind blow a layer of fine snow around for a moment before heading back to his cabin, determined that he would solve his little mystery in the morning. Cody let himself into the room and found Zack sleeping restfully. "At least one of us can," he whispered as he quietly undressed and pulled the covers over himself.

Zack was already gone when Cody woke up the next day. He dressed and made a small breakfast before making for the cargo bay and suiting up. Outside, he shivered in spite of his layers and momentarily wondered how Zack could deal with the cold for hours at a time. Cody shook his head and started walking.

As he passed his brother's small training area, Cody began to feel like he was walking into thicker air. The resistance was small but seemed to grow with each step. Phantom thoughts of _I should turn back _raced through his mind as he reached the small burrow he'd spotted yesterday. Cody shook his head and formed a wall around his mind with the Force. The random thoughts instantly ceased and Cody's hand dropped to just above the hilt of his lightsaber.

Five more minutes of walking brought him to a series small hills covered in sheets of ice. Cody dropped his wall and shivered. He was in the void. He walked the perimeter, eyes open for a cave or any other sort of opening. His pulse quickened as he saw it. The light was hitting the ice just right and Cody could see that there was no rock behind it. He picked up a rock and threw it with the aid of the Force only to see it bounce off and roll back to him. His eyebrows furrowed and he ignited his lightsaber. The familiar _snap-hiss _calmed him as he used it to create a hole through the ice sheet. He deactivated it once he was finished and hung it back on his belt. He pushed the ice he'd cut forward and it fell into the cave with a thunderous crash.

"Master?" Zack asked. "Are you still there?" He had been talking with the voice he knew only as _Master _when it abruptly went silent. "Master?" he asked again, a small kernel of panic beginning to glow inside him.

"There is a darkness approaching my resting place," the spirit finally said in a rushed voice. Zack's blood ran cold as thoughts of the Imperials ran through his mind.

"Where?"

"I will guide you. You must must hurry. So dark. So dark."

Zack broke into a dead run.

His hole made, Cody stepped through and pulled his goggles off before searching his pockets for the glow rod. He snapped it on and shone the beam around the cave. Carvings like he had seen out on the plain were everywhere and there was an intricate stone path set into the cave's floor. The path wound its way around outcroppings and led farther under the hills. Cody followed.

The deeper into the cave he went, the more powerful the feeling of being unwanted grew on Cody. It was so thick that he could almost touch it. He rounded a corner and saw a line of red glowing stones set along each wall. The path turned down a few degrees and he walked further underground, his senses fully extended. A large chamber sat at the end of the path and Cody stepped through the arched doorway

"Who dares to defile my crypt?" a deep voice echoed from the back of the room. Cody felt dark fingers sliding over his mind and instantly wrapped himself in the Force. The voice laughed as it began to worm its way through Cody's mental shield.

"Who are you?" Cody yelled as he pushed the dark fingers back. He felt surprise from the voice as he negated its attack.

"Your weak-willed brother was right, Cody. You are strong in the Force. Not strong enough, however."

"You're a Sith!" Cody exclaimed as everything fell into place for him.

"I was. But even like this I am stronger than you could ever imagine," the voice gloated. "I have the power to pull your brother around like a puppet on its strings."

Cody ignited his lightsaber. "I will destroy you."

"Many before you tried, young Jedi. All failed. Prepare to join them."

Zack's dead run came to a stop at the group of low hills. He looked at the ground and saw scores of footprints around the newly cut entrance. "They are inside," the voice told him as he hesitated.

"I should call my brother," Zack said as he reached into a pocket for his comlink. "He can help us."

"No! There is no time," the voice implored. "If you wait, they will destroy me and take my power as their own. You must not allow that to happen." Zack pulled his hand from his pocket and started running through the cave.

"How much farther?" he called as he dashed around a corner.

"Very close. I have called upon the native life of this planet and they are aiding in my defense but there is one who is far too strong." Zack could almost taste the desperation in the voice.

An image of one of the Imperial Inquisitors popped to the front of Zack's mind and his hand flexed around the curve of his lightsaber's hilt. "I'll take care of him," he said with a dark smile. Zack's blade blazed to life as he ran down the slope to the large chamber. He paused as he took in the sight of a dozen furry beasts wrestling with soldiers dressed in white uniforms. Pools of blood ringed the polished floor. Zack saw his enemy standing in the center of the room beside an ornately carved pillar, dressed in black and with a lightsaber raised in both hands.

"No you don't!" Zack snarled as he charged at the figure. He held his hand out and the figure flew across the room and landed in a heap against the wall.

Cody found himself sailing through the air and barely had the presence of mind to turn his body to absorb a little of the impact. Even with his efforts, he crumpled into the wall and had all of the air forced from his lungs. "What the?" Cody groaned as he opened his eyes to find himself laying on the floor of the cavern. He looked up and saw his brother running at him with a look of hatred in his eyes. "Zack?" he said as he bounced to his feet. "Zack?" Cody barely had time to get his lightsaber up and defend himself before Zack was on him. Sparks flew as their blades crashed together.

Cody was on the defensive and backing across the room, his blue blade deflecting the totally unexpected barrage of strikes. Somewhere behind him he heard the disembodied voice laughing gleefully. "Zack? What are you doing?" he called out as he stepped back.

"Finish him, Zack. He is no match for you. Use what I have taught you." Zack felt the power rising up inside him; the hate, the desire for revenge.

Cody's eyes went wider than they already were as he sensed the dark side welling up in his brother. He backflipped out of the corner Zack was backing him into and landed in the center of the room. "Zack! You've got to stop. You are being manipulated!" he ducked to the side as a rock the size of his fist smashed into the wall and exploded where his head had just been, showering him with razor-sharp shards

"Destroy him, Zack!" the voice yelled in his mind.

"Zack, it's me, Cody!" Cody said calmly as Zack started approaching him again. "I'm your brother. Listen to me!"

Zack's vision cleared for a fraction of a second and the images of the beasts and soldiers disappeared. The figure in black before him dissolved into Cody just as their blades clashed again. He pulled back after a second strike and put a hand over his face as the darkness pounded on him. Cody saw a ribbon of blood sliding down the arm and pooling on the tip of one of Zack's fingers when he lowered it.

"Fight it, Zack!" Cody called out as he stepped back. He pushed against the darkness that was surrounding Zack. Cody became the Inquisitor again in Zack's eyes before fading back to himself a second time.

"What's happening to me?" Zack whispered as he staggered and leaned against the wall. He looked up through a mess of tangled, sweaty hair and saw the room for what it really was. "Get out of my head!" He dropped his lightsaber and sunk to his knees. Cody held a hand out and Zack's lightsaber flew into his hand. He snapped it off and hung it beside his own.

He could feel the dark spirit seething in the cave and turned to the far wall. "Interfere in any way and I will find a way to destroy you," he said calmly to the back of the room as he reached a hand down to help Zack up. He slid an arm over his shoulders and let himself carry much of Zack's weight.

"You can never destroy the dark side you foolish Jedi," the voice countered, but the voice was weaker, less sure of itself than it had been moments ago. Cody didn't respond as he led Zack from the cave. He wrapped one arm around Zack's waist as he raised the other to the cave's mouth. Rocks and ice were yanked from the wall and quickly filled the yawning darkness. He took Zack's weight again and slowly led him away.

"Cody?" Zack said softly as they were approaching their ship.

"Yeah?"

"I'm sorry. So sorry. It's my fault all this happened."

"Don't worry about that right now. We'll get you on board and then get off this ice ball."

"Where are we going?"

"Somewhere with a real doctor to get you healed up first. After that, I don't know. We'll think of something."

_Apologies for the delay, everyone. Health issues and too much work took up almost all of my time over the last month. I'd also like to do a _mea culpa _for not answering the reviews for the last chapter. I always try to answer all the signed reviews but for whatever reason ff.n decided it wasn't going to tell me I had any until things were well into the craziness. I think I answered a few of the questions with this chapter and the others will be answered in the next chapter or two. One that's sticking in my mind right now is whether or not there'll be other TSL characters in the story. Yes, there will be. One will very likely show up in the later parts of the next chapter and then you'll be seeing them almost on a regulary basis._

_Thanks for sticking with me on this and thanks for reviewing._


	4. Chapter 4

The man on the roof scratched his stubbly grey beard before he rolled his shoulders to try to alleviate some of the tension that had built up after laying on his stomach with a set of macrobinoculars stuck to his eyes for long hours day after day. He was snuggled in between two large ventilation ducts and their fans and his long-barreled rifle lay within easy reach.

Since he had taken up his spot a few days ago, he had memorized each chip and crack in the road that passed in front of the Imperial governor's residence and had given nicknames to the various stormtroopers that stood guard outside the door. He glanced at the time hack in the top corner of the small screen and saw that he still had another six hours until he was relieved. He grunted and changed his position slightly and tried his best not to allow boredom to lead to inattention. 

Cody had never believed he would even _think _it but he had actually begun to miss Zack's boisterous personality. After the events of Carosi and Zack's lengthy healing trance during their four-day jaunt through hyperspace, Cody was beginning to crave the random noises his brother made. He shook his head as he pulled them back into realspace on the outskirts of the Vandyne system.

The system's enormous blue star instantly filled almost a quarter of his viewscreen. Cody flipped a switch and the screen's filter turned on, dimming the glare considerably. Able to see again, he scanned the display and exhaled a sigh of relief when there wasn't a Star Destroyer or an Interdictor lurking in the area. The odds were low, he knew, but the Empire's fleet was nothing if not massive. He laid in a course to the lone habitable planet and relaxed.

Cody allowed the autopilot to take over while he busied himself elsewhere. He strode to the cargo bay and unlatched the lid on a large trunk and began rooting through its contents, hoping that there would be something inside that they could change into instead of walking through a strange city in robes. Most of what he found inside was useless to him but he did find a Wookiee-sized cloak. He felt a wisp of sadness as he closed and re-latched the trunk.

"A bit of lightsaber alteration and we'll be in business," he said as he studied the huge garment. He laid the cloak on the floor of the bay and ignited his blade and slowly but precisely cut it into two halves. Two quick flicks of his wrist cut neck holes in the center of each piece and Cody had created two ponchos. He snapped the lightsaber off and hung it back on his belt and pulled the poncho over his head.

"Nice style," he heard Zack say a split second after he noticed his brother in the Force. He glanced up just in time to see Zack walk in.

"I made you one, too." He tossed the other to Zack and watched as he pulled it on. It came down almost to the middle of his shins.

"Cody, we are going to look like the two biggest rubes on the entire planet when we land."

"Exactly. This way we won't stick out like a bantha or, hopefully, be memorable to anyone."

Zack shook his head and grinned. "I guess."

"We're landing on a small time agriculture and mining world, Zack, not stepping into the Coruscanti Opera House. We'll be fine."

He turned away from Zack and walked to the wall right beside the cargo bay's exit and pushed three spots repeatedly in sequence. A hidden panel opened and Cody reached his hand in and pulled out a small pouch. He untied the drawstring and dumped a collection of credit chits into his hand.

"How much?"

"A couple hundred," Cody answered as he dumped them back into the bag. "Enough." He tucked the pouch deep into his robes and pulled the poncho back in front.

A short while later they were seated in the cockpit as their approach neared its end. Cody entered orbit around Vandyne and was almost immediately noticed.

"This is Vandyne Spaceport Control," the tinny voice said through the speaker, "hailing the vessel _Ilar Drifter. _Do you copy?"

"That didn't take long," Zack said before he turned on their coms. "We copy, Control. Request permission to land."

"Stand by," the voice said before going quiet. A small craft with obvious firepower soon joined up with them and kept a reasonable distance off their starboard wing. Cody could see the pilot's helmet reflecting the star's light as he looked at them.

Zack hit the mute button and looked warily at Cody. "We shouldn't be worried about this, should we?"

"No, I don't think so. I don't feel anything out of the ordinary. They're just doing a routine scan on us. We don't have anything to hide so we should be just fine."

"Good, because I don't really want to have to fight our way out of anything in this glorified garbage scow."

"Well, that's good because because we'd have to use harsh language since there aren't any weapons on this thing anyway," Cody told him just before the voice returned a few seconds later.

"Permission granted," the voice told them and rattled off a course and a landing pad assignment.

"Thanks, Control. _Drifter_ out," Zack replied and turned the comm off.

Cody grabbed hold of the sticks and steered their ship along the proper vector and began to descend. As they began passing through the atmosphere, they began to bump and jar as the air became thicker. They quickly found themselves in a huge bank of thunder clouds and they could see sparks of electricity chase along the leading edges of their wings.

"Of course they send us right through a storm," Zack groused as he grabbed the copilot's steering yoke to help Cody keep their ship level.

Cody quickly glanced down at the sensor display as they entered a relatively smooth patch of air. "I don't think we can blame them on that. This storm is huge."

"Let's just get under it," Zack said as they pushed the yoke forward and descended faster. Soon enough they were under the worst of the storm and the space port came into view. Square kilometer after square kilometer of drab grey duracrete lay before them, but only a small percentage were filled with any sort of vessel.

"You know, you'd think with all the empty spaces between our berth and the front of the port, you'd think that they could find somewhere closer for us to land," Zack said as Cody brought the _Drifter _in for a landing. They shut most of the systems down but left the engines in standby just in case they had to make a fast getaway. There was a very overweight customs official hustling to the bottom of the ramp as they left the ship.

"Greetings and welcome to the wonderful world of Vandyne," the Rodian said in a bored monotone that sounded as if he'd said the same thing a million times. He smoothed his bunched uniform back into place before continuing. "We hope your stay will be enjoyable but first we have a small amount of business to take care of. A few simple forms and you will be on your way." He pulled a datapad from his vest with one hand and discretely held his other out, palm up and fingers cupped and waving slightly.

Zack raised his hand as if to take the datapad but stopped halfway and slowly pulled his hand to the side. "We already filled out your forms," he said, putting weight behind the words with the Force. Cody's mouth dropped open in surprise.

The Rodian's gaze softened for a fraction of a second before glancing vacantly at his datapad. "Oh, how foolish of me. You already filled the forms out. I don't know what I was thinking."

"We can go about our business," Zack said softly.

"Feel free to go about your business, travelers." The portly Rodian bowed politely and began trotting back the way he came.

"What was that?" Cody asked once they were alone again.

"Keeping us out of the system."

"We could have just bribed him," Cody said, not bothering to hide the irritation in his voice. "In case you couldn't tell they don't exactly run the tightest port in the galaxy."

Zack looked contrite when he spoke again. "I didn't think about that."

Cody let it drop. "Don't worry about it. Let's just find a doctor, get some information and supplies, and get out of here." Cody could feel the argument bubbling in Zack's head and beat him to the punch. "You're getting checked out. End of story. And don't make me do it," he said as he waggled his fingers in front of Zack, "you know I can."

"Fine. It's a waste of credits but fine." 

"Lots of comm chatter all of a sudden, Rajac," a feminine voice said in his ear. "Common band _and_ Imperial." He took one hand off of the macrobinoculars and activated his close-range comm with a touch to the side of his helmet.

"What have we got, Suna?" he whispered. Suna was a blue-skinned Twi'lek and the second member of his small team. She was currently sitting a few meters behind him and to his right and had a bulky, heavily modded comm held to her ear.

"From the common band, nothing much out of the ordinary as far as I can tell. Something about the spaceport. Now on the Imp side of things, wow, it sounds like someone has dropped a pissed-off Nexu in the middle of a tea party. It seems that someone has tripped the Imperial's watch list and the Imps are going crazy."

"I was wondering if anything was ever going to happen while we were on station," Rajac replied. "Any idea where?"

"The spaceport from the sound of it."

"Rookies," he muttered as he lifted the macrobinoculars slightly and refocused them on the long street that eventually led to the space port. "Probably blasted off some Imp world and didn't bother to have a slicer hack their ship's registration before landing. Rookie mistake. Keep monitoring the transmissions." He took a deep breath and contemplated his options for a few seconds. "Notify the _Long Shot_ that we might have a situation."

"Copy that," she whispered.

They were standing in front of an information kiosk, eyes peeled while Cody's datapad was jacked into the computer. The pad beeped a few seconds later and he pulled it free and brought up a map of the city and looked it over.

"Looks like there's a clinic a few blocks to our north," he said as Zack crowded in and looked over his shoulder. He turned the pad slightly so they could both read it without Zack's chin burrowing into his neck.

"Shopping plaza directly to our east," he said, pointing it out. "We can pick up the bacta there and whatever else we might need."

"We can't spend too much. What we have is all we have."

"I know, Cody. I was just saying. We might come across some food that doesn't taste like the ship's usual mynock snot." Zack laughed when he saw his brother smile for the first time in weeks. The smile faded when Cody's eyes found the scrolling marquee above them.

"Emperor Palpatine issues new executive orders in wake of most recent terrorist activities," he read and shook his head.

"Probably ordered another orbital strike and melted some defenseless city," Zack said and Cody could feel the anger bubbling up in him.

"Come on, let's get going." They left the kiosk and did their best to blend in with the massive throng of beings in the street. The clinic, being closer, was their first destination. The building came into view as they walked and the twins looked at each other.

"This place looks like it's hundreds of years old," Zack said as he saw that large chunks of the facade had fallen off. Some had been cleaned up but others still littered the ground around the building.

"As long as it holds up long enough to get you checked out I think we can deal with it." Cody pushed the door open and they stepped into a waiting room. A furry being of a species he had never seen directed them to a row of seats after a short conversation.

"What in the name of the blue sun happened to you, son?" the wrinkled old doctor said as he watched the medical droid run a scan over the burns on Zack's chest and arms. The twins had been worried about being able to get in to see the man on short notice but once they pulled out credits, that problem had disappeared as quickly as morning fog.

Zack looked at Cody and the alarm was almost overpowering in the Force. Neither twin had considered that they might have to explain the nature of Zack's injuries.

"It was a plasma core malfunction," Cody quickly answered. "It overloaded and energy arced out and he was unfortunately in the wrong place." It was a vaguely plausible explanation and Cody instantly reached out into the Force to see if the doctor was believing it. Cody soon discovered that the doctor didn't seem all that concerned by his reply and carried on his examination as if he hadn't heard Cody's reply. He let out a small sigh of relief.

The MD droid relayed its findings to the doctor's datapad and he took a moment to study them. "Well, it seems that everything seems to be healing normally. No internal injuries but I have to say that next time you might want to stay well clear of a plasma core, overloading or not. They can be dangerous so leave them to an adult."

Cody saw Zack's eyebrows knit and furrow and pushed calm feelings to him. Zack looked back at him with a smirk and a slight nod. "Yes, sir," he said as he pulled his clothes back on. "I'll do that."

"Good, good. Keep bacta on the wounds and they should heal completely within another few days. There might be some scarring but I can't say for sure."

"Thank you, Doctor," Cody said as the man left the room. The droid followed behind him, its servos whirring quietly as it passed through the doorway.

"Leave them to an adult? Are you kidding me?" Zack shook his head. "If he thinks plasma cores are dangerous, he should go against some stormtroopers."

"Easy, Zack. He doesn't know any better. He's just a backworld doctor. The only stormtroopers he's probably ever seen are the ones that are garrisoning the governor's palace or on patrol."

"You're probably right but still." Zack was still throwing off vibes of indignation but they were lessening so Cody let it go.

"I know I am. Let's get out of here and finish our business. This place is starting to make me nervous." He pulled Zack's lightsaber out from under his cloak and handed it to his brother.

"Do you feel anything?" Zack asked, suddenly serious. He held the hilt in his hand a long second before attaching it to his belt.

Cody shook his head. "No, I don't sense anything. I just don't like being out like this. I feel exposed."

"We're going to have to go dirtside somewhere eventually, Cody. We can't wander the space lanes forever. Or..."

Cody interrupted before Zack could continue. "Or we could have this conversation somewhere else." He flicked his eyes around the room.

"I doubt the Imps have bugged a run-down doctor's clinic," Zack said as they made for the door.

"It's unlikely but you never know. Let's grab some lunch and supplies and get out of here."

"We're going to have to talk about it soon unless we become pirates. Our supplies and credits will only last so long."

"When we get back to the _Drifter,_" Cody told him. "We'll figure it out then." It was a conversation that he'd been expecting to have but wanted no part of. Zack was all for joining the Rebellion while Cody maintained that war was no place for a Jedi. He was prepared to admit that they would have to fight if they didn't want to run for the rest of their lives but wanted to put that admission off as long as possible. He was still worried about Zack's brush with the Dark Side but realized that their time was probably running very short.

Twenty minutes later they were seated in an outdoor cafe, picking their way through what passed as the local cuisine while listening in to the conversations of their fellow diners. Passive intelligence was what Master Ishalka had called it, and the twins picked up all sorts of info while they sat. Most of it was irrelevant but a few pieces were filed away in the back of Cody's mind.

"Only a Hutt would find this edible," Zack announced as he stabbed at something that may have been either a tentacle or a green vegetable. He moved it around on the plate for a few minutes before hunger began to overpower finickiness. He looked up mid-bite and put his fork down.

"Zack, don't," Cody whispered. A squad of stormtroopers was walking down the road across from them, their helmet visors reflecting the hard light as they scanned the area. "Act normal, remember?"

Zack's hand released its grip on his lightsaber and reappeared from under his cloak. "It's a little hard when when the last time we saw them, they were shooting at us." He squinted slightly and reached out into the Force and felt alertness and a sense of purpose radiating from the squad. "They're looking for someone," he said softly. "I don't think it's us but I'm not sure."

"I hope you're right but I think you're wrong," Cody said as he looked around. "We have to go. Now."

"That yells out _suspicious_, you know."

"Yes it does but we can't fight here. There's too many civilians." Cody realized he'd just made his decision about their future by his choice of words. The others were civilians and he was not. He took one more bite and pushed his chair back. The cleaning droid would have to deal with their dishes; there was no time. Zack joined him and they started winding their way through the maze of tables and their occupants.

They came out on a side street and immediately ducked down the nearest alley. "Okay, so we're getting our supplies somewhere else," Zack said as he leapt over an overturned trash bin that was blocking their path.

"Obviously," Cody huffed as a stray blaster bolt ricocheted of a wall somewhere behind them. They rushed around a corner and burst into a full sprint toward the spaceport, taking care to keep well out of the way of any crowds.

It was Zack who first became aware of the sea of white armor. A sensation of danger traveled along his spine and made the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end as they crested the small rise that the spaceport sat on. He grabbed Cody by the collar and yanked him to a stop just as a stormtrooper's mechanically augmented voice ordered them to stop.

"Nope, this isn't going to work," he said as they turned and raced down the main road that lead away from the spaceport and toward the government district. "We're going to have to find another way." 

"The Imperial comms are going crazy," Suna said as she crawled toward the front of the building. "They've called out just about every trooper in the city. We're going to have to find a place to lay low for a while if they start heading our way."

"I know," Rajac told her gruffly. As much as he was bored by their lengthy surveillance, he found the idea of being kicked from his rooftop by a squad of bumbling stormtroopers deeply offensive. "Send them our most recent data now in case we have to make a run for it in a bit."

"Already on it."

Rajac settled in again and within thirty seconds he saw movement at the edge of the macrobinoculars' range. At first it was nothing but a huge blob of white chasing after a small dab of black but it slowly resolved into a mass of white-clad stormtroopers and a pair of..._boys_? "Suna? Any word on what the Imps are after?"

"Only that it's two individuals. No info, just a detain at all costs order. Why?"

"I think I just found them. Come up here and take a look." She crawled up on the other side of the duct and raised her own pair of macrobinoculars.

"That's a lot of effort for two, what are they, Jawas?"

"I think they're human kids."

"What would the Imps want with some kids?" Suna asked as she refined her focus.

"I have no idea but I doubt it's anything good."

"So what do we do?"

"We wait and see. Our mission is to pick up intel, not deal with whatever this turns out to be." He could tell she didn't like that order but he didn't like to give it. 

An armored speeder zipped out of a side street a half kilometer in front of them and began speeding their way. Cody saw the muzzle flashes of the speeder's turret wink at him as he was already in mid-dodge. The shots tore up the ground where he had been a fraction of a second ago. Barely breaking stride, he reached an arm out in front of him with fingers splayed. He pulled them into a fist and the nose of the speeder crumpled and dug into the road for a few meters before it began flipping end over end. Cody ducked and rolled as it flew over his head while Zack called on the Force and jumped over it.

"We can't keep this up forever," Zack said as he landed and took off again.

"I know! I'll think of something."

"You'd better do it fast. There's more of them coming every second!" Zack swung an arm and sent a squad that appeared from behind a building flying as they brought their rifles to their shoulders.

"I'm working on it!"

"This isn't how I figured our last stand would go. I always figured there'd be more drama, maybe some exotic planet, a beautiful female; you know, just like in all the holovids that we were never supposed to watch.

"I guess we'll have to make our own vid. Are you ready?"

"As I'll ever be."

"There's a dramatic line for you, Zack," Cody said as he ripped his cloak off and sent it flying with a Force flick backward into their pursuers. Zack tossed his off and simply let it fall to the ground. 

"Did you see that?" Suna asked as they watched the speeder cartwheel down the street.

"Must have been a massive repulsor coil malfunction," Rajac commented just as his targets threw their cloaks away. He was about to add that things were about to get boring again when spears of green and blue suddenly appeared in the boys' hands. "No way. Absolutely no way!"

"Are those...?"

"Yes. Call the team and have them get the ship ready for immediate take-off then go get our speeder ready. We're going to need to make a fast exit."

"No more gathering intelligence, huh?" Suna said as she opened the comm to the other members of their team while jumping to her feet and heading toward the other end of the roof.

"Nope. This is bigger than any intel coup we could find in a million years." He put the macrobinoculars aside and wrapped his hand around the grip of his rifle. He pulled the sight to his eye and pulled the trigger an instant later. 

The twins were batting the stormtroopers' shots away as the waited for the inevitable showdown. They were backpedaling at a fast jog, both with their minds fully submerged in the Force. Their hands moved on their own accord and bolts of energy were deflected either harmlessly away or incredibly harmfully back at them.

"If we make it out of this, we're going to have to find another way off this planet," Zack said through gritted teeth. "I don't think we'll be heading back to the spaceport any time soon."

"We'll find a way off the planet," Cody told him, his spirits suddenly buoyed by a ripple in the Force. "We just have to hold out a little longer."

A loud _crack _came from behind them and they saw one of the stormtroopers' heads jerk back before his body crashed to the ground. More shots quickly followed and the volume of their attackers' shots began to decrease rapidly as the stormtroopers looked for any sign of their new attacker.

"Looks like we've made a friend," Cody announced.

"Good thing because we're just about out of street," Zack replied as he spared a quick glance behind at the buildings that were rushing up to meet them. He yanked a vendor's sidewalk stall into the road and sent it tumbling at the stormtroopers.

An engine being gunned reached their ears and they both snapped their heads around to see a beat up old speeder race out from between a group of buildings and screeched to a halt a dozen meters away from them. Cody reached his hand out to toss the vehicle away but stopped when he didn't feel a hostile presence. A Twi'lek female got out and set a massive repeating blaster to her shoulder and took aim.

"Get in if you want a ride out of here!" she yelled as dozens of green bolts began screaming toward the stormtroopers' line. Most of the shots were wild but it did a great job of scattering them and breaking up their chase.

"There's your beautiful female character, Zack. This isn't turning out to be a bad vid after all," Cody said as they sprinted to the speeder and potential freedom. Their rescuer stopped firing only long enough to replace her spent power pack with a fresh one before once again shooting at the Imperials.

"And she's good with a gun, too! Forget everything I said earlier," he replied just as they reached the speeder and climbed in the back hatch. The Twi'lek stopped firing and climbed back in, slinging the blaster into the passenger seat as she hit the button to close the doors. A second later she stomped on the accelerator and the vehicle sped away from the Imperials.

"Thanks for the help," Cody told her once he'd strapped himself in.

"Don't thank me yet, kid. We've still got to get out of the city."

"Then you might want to turn that way," Zack said as she turned in the opposite direction.

"We have to pick up a friend first," she replied tersely as she hunkered down over the wheel and pushed the speeder faster.

"Oh," Zack replied, chastised.

"Rajac, be there in ten seconds," she said after activating her mic.

"Copy that," they all heard over the speeder's speakers. "The ship is ready at the extraction point."

"Got it. Suna out." She tapped the mic again before slaloming the speeder around a building and down an alley. She came to a stop behind a cantina as a burly man stepped out from the loading dock. He sheathed a bloodied fighting knife and got in.

"Have a bit of trouble?"

"Just met a few old friends on the way here."

"I'd hate to see what happens when he meets an old enemy," Zack deadpanned as they sped off again.

The man turned around and looked at the twins. "And you must be our," he paused, "I can't even say it. I can't believe it. I thought the Emperor had exterminated all the Jedi."

"He missed a few," Zack replied.

Suna spared them a glance while driving flat-out. Cody instinctively checked that his straps were still tight. "I hope you two are legit because I can honestly say that I haven't seen Rajac this excited in all the years I've been working with him."

"They are," Rajac said. "No one else could have done what they did back there."

"Well, that's settled," she said with a shrug as they left the last buildings of the city behind and zipped over the surrounding plains. A warning light began flashing after a very quiet five minutes. "We're going to have company," Suna said suddenly. "The Imps have scrambled TIEs from the spaceport. They'll be over us in about two and a half minutes."

"How far to your ship?" Zack asked, clearly picking up on the anxiety of her voice.

"About three minutes."

"We'll make it," Rajac announced.

They almost did. The TIEs began shooting when the ship just appeared in the distance. Suna flung the speeder from side to side as she tried to evade their fire. Errant shots dug deep craters in the ground on each side of them and Zack ducked reflexively when they were sprayed with chunks of rock from an exceptionally near miss.

"They can feel free to return fire any time now," Rajac groused as they dodged another round of fire. As if on cue, the _Long Shot _did just that. The twins saw green laser blasts race over their heads and the sensor display showed one less TIE fighter behind them. "About time." The TIEs scattered as they raced across the last few kilometers.

"They're already moving!" Zack called out as he saw their target was beginning to accelerate away from them.

"This is going to be a hot dust-off, kid. No time to make it nice and pretty," Suna said as she aimed their speeder at the ramp hanging open on the back of the _Long Shot._

"Easy, Suna," Rajac told her and she shot him a questioning look. He shook it off and she focused on guiding them into the cargo bay. Time passed in a blur and Cody barely noticed the bay doors close as they almost instantly decelerated. He could feel the ship's nose point skyward as they launched as well as the rapid _thud-thud-thud _of the ship's turbolasers as they returned the TIEs fire.

The four exited the speeder and Rajac led them through the ship's corridors to the cockpit. A human and a Zabrak sat at the controls. Cody couldn't help but but look at the small horns that protruded from the Zabrak's head. "Tanner is in the ventral turret taking care of our TIE problem. You can meet him later. These two are Dace and Vega and they'll be getting us out of here, right, guys?" Rajac said in lieu of a more formal introduction.

"That's right," Vega replied. "The jump is already set in. We just have to get to the point to make it. The _Event Horizon _is waiting for us."

"We're jumping to a _black hole_?" Cody asked incredulously, wondering if their would-be rescuers had a death wish.

"No," the human Dace said with a grin, "that's our mother ship. Not a black hole."

"But I guess you could think of the supply bays as black holes. Nothing ever seems to come out of them," Vega added.

"Except forms. Lots of those."

"Yeah, except those."

"Stow the comedy routine and get us out of here already," Suna told them. They beat back the pursuing TIE fighters and a lone system patrol craft and made the jump point in less than thirty minutes. Vega pulled the lever and the stars dissolved into lines and the twins felt the stress of the last hours flow off of them.

Five minutes later they reverted to realspace in the absolute middle of galactic nowhere. Very few stars were visible and the blackness was more immense than Zack could ever have imagined. A massive vessel was sitting in the void, surrounded by a screen of smaller ships and a cloud of what he instantly recognized as X-wings.

"That's a Nebulon-B," Cody said, slightly in awe and unable to take his eyes from the large ship. His eyes traced it from one end to the other and felt safe for the first time since they'd lost their Master. Zack put a hand on his shoulder.

"Welcome to the Rebellion, kids," Rajac said as they began their approach.

_Now I'm getting to the parts I want to write. There shouldn't be as long between chapters now that I've gotten past the slow introductory parts (knock on wood). Aside from that, I've discovered that this story is making me think in ways I wouldn't have to. I never figured it would be hard to describe things without using common 'earth' phrases. I had the phrase "kicked over a hornet's nest" in the story until I realized that wasn't 'star wars-y'. It's also made me have to think in metric which, as an American and a user of feet and pounds and ounces for decades, means just about nothing to me outside of a two-liter bottle of soda. How much is a kilogram? Somewhere around half a pound I think. How long is a kilometer? I have no idea but thankfully I have Google. Not that any of you probably really care about that but I figured I'd mention it._

_Anyway, thanks for reading!_


	5. Chapter 5

Zack whistled as they maneuvered into the _Event Horizon's _cavernous hangar bay. They settled down onto the shuttle's landing struts and Dace and Vega started the shutdown sequences. Lights went out and displays turned off and the shuttle went to sleep. Vega patted the console lovingly. "Good girl," he said as he relaxed. "Got us home safe and sound again."

"We'll meet up with you all later," Rajac told the pilots. "I've got to see Commander Ommel. You two," he pointed to the twins, "come with me." He led the way from the cockpit and the brothers fell into line right behind him.

Cody slowed and gazed at the organized chaos as the stepped down the ramp and into the hangar and his senses were assaulted from all directions. The acrid yet sweet smell of coolant wrinkled his noise, scores of voices and the roar of tools pounded on his eardrums, and dozens of different species and uniforms scurried back and forth.

"I haven't asked but I'm fairly sure I know the answer to this question," Rajac said loudly over the din of the hangar. "Are you with us?"

"We are," Zack told the man without pausing to confer with his brother. "Right, Cody?" he asked almost as an afterthought.

"Well, I guess we are. This isn't really a war we can sit out."

"I figured as much," Rajac told them.

"We'll do whatever we can," Zack replied and the question was settled.

They stepped into a large turbolift and rapidly ascended from the bowels of the ship to the bridge in under a minute. There was a door at the end of the hallway and they made for it, pausing only long enough to announce their presence at the door's panel. The door slid open.

"Ah, Lieutenant Rajac," Commander Ommel said as they stepped into his cabin. "I was hoping you would come by and explain exactly why it was that you had to abandon your post on Vandyne." He was standing in front of a large pane of transparisteel and looking out across the gulf of space with his hands locked behind his back.

"We didn't really have much of a choice, Commander," he replied as Zack and Cody slid in behind him. "If we had stayed much longer our cover would have been blown."

"And you had to gun your way out of the system? Do you realize how long it will take for us to get a new set of agents inserted to work with the others you stranded?"

"With all due respect, sir," Rajac said, and Cody could feel the man's blood pressure starting to rise and was sure that as far as Rajac was concerned, the amount of respect due was somewhere right above zero, "I think we came out ahead. These...young men are more important that any information we could have picked up."

"Yes, Suna's message mentioned something about finding a surprise. Though, I'm not sure what these two kids who are still years away from their first shave can do to help us."

Zack bristled at being called a kid but Cody stepped on his toes before he said anything.

"They're more than just kids, sir. They're Jedi."

Ommel had been watching them in the transparisteel's reflection and he turned around when he heard those words. "I was under the impression that the Jedi were no more."

"No, sir, they are as real as you or I." Ommel looked them over like they were a bizarre species he'd only heard the vaguest rumors about and might attack him without warning.

"Do you trust them?"

"Sir?"

"Do you _trust_ them, Lieutenant?"

"With my life, Commander."

"That is good," the commander said as he turned to the transparisteel again. "Maybe this Force they are said to believe in brought them here to accompany you on your next mission."

"Sir? We just returned from a long deployment on Vandyne. The crew needs time to rest and we need to rearm and resupply."

"I am aware of this but you are the only assets we have available at the moment." He turned and waited for any argument from Rajac. Seeing nothing but the man's blank military stare, he continued. "Shortly before you arrived, I received a message from Mon Mothma. A _most urgent _message concerning a sensor relay station that the Imperials have set up on Dathomir. If we are to continue any of our operations in that sector it must be destroyed. I was pondering how to go about its elimination and was delivered from my dilemma when I received word of your arrival."

Zack inhaled sharply when he heard the name Dathomir.

"Of course, sir," Rajac replied automatically but both twins could sense his growing irritation.

"Good. I'll have a briefing package drawn up for you and your team. Expect it within an hour."

"We'll be ready. Come, young Jedi, we have much to do." Zack and Cody followed him out of the stateroom and into the corridor.

"I don't think he likes us much," Cody said once the hatch had sealed behind them.

"I don't think I like _him _much," Zack added, still trying to settle himself. He felt Cody probing his mind and sent back an _I'm okay _feeling.

"It isn't that he doesn't like you, it's that he doesn't know how to quantify you. To Ommel, everything is a number. How many hits the ship's shields can be expected to take before they collapse, the number of power packs for Suna's blaster currently in the hold, things like that. You two are a...a wild card to him. He can't pin a number on you so he is wary."

"It was still a frosty reception."

"I'm sure that was for me. I know he doesn't like me."

"Why wouldn't he? You're on the same side," Cody said, a bit surprised.

"He doesn't agree with what my squad and I specialize in. We're what the Alliance calls wetwork."

"Assassins," Zack said quietly after Cody looked to him.

"Correct. Ommel is from a long line of naval officers. He's all honor and chivalry and doesn't believe that targeted killings have a place in the war against the Empire but High Command says otherwise. Any means necessary is what they told him when they assigned us to him. He wants this mission done, knows we can do it, but won't lose a wink of sleep if we don't come back."

The three were quiet as they waited for the turbolift to take them down to the hangar bay. Rajac was already planning the mission in his head and issuing orders for supplies into his comlink, Cody was pondering the morality of assassinations, and Zack was trying to push any thoughts of Dathomir and what it might represent out of his mind.

Almost exactly an hour later a courier appeared outside their ship and handed Rajac a datapad with as much information as they had about their target as well as two satchels filled with explosives. The man skimmed the pad, nodded and stepped back inside, and prepared to launch.

"We're on a very tight schedule here, crew. We're to pop out of hyperspace at Dathomir and do our best to get dirtside as quickly as possible," Rajac told the crew while in hyperspace. Cody felt his brother's pulse increase and gave him a reassuring nudge in the Force. "It's going to be tight flying but once we've slipped in, hopefully unnoticed, we land and make our way to the building, blow it up, and get out again."

"I'll handle getting us in and out," Vega told them. "I could fly this thing backwards and blindfolded and the Imps still wouldn't notice us. You all just worry about blowing the place sky high."

"How many stormies?" Suna asked as she checked the workings of her blaster.

"They estimate a company."

"So there'll be two," she replied and slid a full pack into the blaster. "Five of us, a hundred of them. Easy times." Cody was unable to figure out if the woman's voice was laced with bravado or fatalism.,

"No, there will only be the four of us. I'm having Tanner set us up a nice, big sparkler to cover our escape."

"Even better odds," she said with a laugh. Definitely fatalism, Cody decided.

"I hope so," Rajac admitted. "This is a last-second mission and the intel is spotty at best. Hopefully our two new members can give us an edge to keep things from getting too ugly." He looked expectantly at the twins.

"We can. Just tell us what we need to do," Cody said and Zack nodded his assent.

"If everything goes well, you won't need to do much. If it doesn't..." Rajac left the statement unfinished. "We do have a new trick up our sleeve." He picked up one of the explosive satchels and pulled out a small device. "Brand new from wherever it is they make new weapons. Destructive power of a thermal detonator in a third of the size."

"Or so they say," Tanner said as he examined the bomb and handed it back.

The briefing finished up a few minutes later and the small crew went about their preparations. Cody caught up with Zack by a viewport near the cargo bay. "Are you going to be okay down there? Master Ishalka said the Dark Side is powerful on Dathomir."

Zack turned slowly. "I have to be. I'm stronger now. I can't let what I did get in the way of our mission."

"Just remember," Cody told him as he put a hand on his brother's shoulder, "I'll be there with you. I can help if you need it."

"I'll remember. Promise." He started to turn back to the starlines that were racing past but stopped. "Maybe this is some sort of test," Zack said and continued after Cody's confused look. "It must be the will of the Force that we're going to a place like that so soon after...what happened."

"It might be," Cody replied. It was the will of the Force, Cody was certain of that. But its purpose? He could only guess and hope. "We should rest while we can, Zack. Come on." He led his brother away from the viewport and to the small lounge. Cody cleared his mind and meditated and hoped that Zack could do the same.

They dropped back into realspace five hours later and Dathomir shone in front of them like a jewel. Zack felt the low pulse of the Dark Side emanating from the planet, subtle as an undertow, lapping at him as they approached. They drifted aimlessly in space as they waited for the lone settlement on the northern continent to dip below the horizon. Once it had safely disappeared onto the planet's night side, they powered up the engines and accelerated, all eyes on the sensor displays as they dove through the atmosphere.

"Hull's getting really hot," Suna announced as the indicator showed the metal reaching nearly one thousand degrees.

"She'll hold together a little longer," Vega told her but his voice was strained. He soon shallowed out their dive and the heat dropped dramatically as they raced across the surface barely a dozen meters above the thick jungle. "I still say I can get you a lot closer than your four kilometers, Rajac."

"I know you can, Vega, but I don't want to take the chance. Just keep it steady and drop us off like we planned.

As they sped to the designated landing zone, Zack opened his mind and let the Force flow through him. He felt the Dark Side just as he did from orbit but he was surprised to feel the essences of billions upon billions of animal lives down there. It was a _clean _feeling, one that nearly counterbalanced the taint of the Dark Side.

Their ship slowed to a hover and the small group rappelled through the thick canopy to the jungle floor a dozen meters below. They saw the engines flicker through the leaves and then they were alone as Vega left to find a suitable place to hide a fifty-meter freighter until they were ready to leave.

"I still don't see why we didn't just blow the place up from orbit," Suna whispered a few minutes into their trek. "Save us all a bunch of wear and tear."

"It's simple," Rajac replied, "we don't have a ship with enough firepower to spare."

Silence fell over the group after that exchange as they saved their energy to battle the trees and insects, both of which appeared to be determined to impede their progress as much as possible. The vegetation seemed to steer them away from their target and deeper into the jungle and they had to go around dozens of obstacles. Fortune finally went their way when they came across a dry stream bed that ran roughly along their path. They dropped down into it and their speed picked up considerably.

"We're being watched," Cody announced in a low voice. Eyes instantly flicked out into the trees and fingers tightened around triggers.

"Can you tell from where?"

"No," he told Rajac. "Well, technically yes, but it seems to be coming from everywhere."

"I don't feel like we're in any immediate danger," Zack added even as his lightsaber suddenly appeared in his hand.

"No," Cody said again. "Whatever it is, it's not very close to us."

"Not Imperial?" Suna asked as she turned to look behind them.

"Definitely not. I can vaguely sense them and they feel calm."

"You can do that?" Tanner asked, looking at Zack. "Feel them from this far away?"

"Cody can. He's better at that than I am." Tanner looked at him with a mixture of amazement and mild skepticism before turning back to the path.

Their easy path came to an end at just over a kilometer from the Imperial complex as the dry bed curved away to the west. Rajac called a halt after they climbed out and came to a large treefall that overlooked the slope down to the buildings. He stared through a set of macrobinoculars and transferred the images to his datapad before joining the rest of them behind the downed trees.

"This is our target. Behind it is the barracks. Tanner, your target is the speeder garage here," he said, pointing to a smaller outbuilding on the edge of his pad's display. "We'll meet you back here when everything is over. Good luck." The other man nodded and gathered his pack and satchel of explosives and started skulking his way through the dense growth.

"We've got to move fast. There's only about thirty minutes before the moons begin to rise so let's move out." The four of them began descending the small hill, taking care to remain behind as much cover as possible. Every few dozen steps Suna pulled out a small electronic wand and scanned for any surveillance devices.

They were a stone's throw from the building's outer wall when the screening trees and shrubs ended abruptly. Jagged trunks and burned vegetation marked the start of the Imperial's recently created perimeter.

"No guards," Rajac said softly as he scanned the building.

"I don't sense any either," Cody told the man. The only security they could see was a floodlight over a nearby door. "Why wouldn't they be patrolling?"

"They're either incredibly confident in this place's secrecy and aren't worried about anyone stumbling onto it or maybe, and I doubt it's the case since it would mean something is going in our favor, maybe all the garrisoning troops haven't arrived yet. According to our intel, it only came online two days ago," Suna said as she pulled a pair of macrobinoculars from her face. "Either way, I won't look a gift bantha in the mouth even though we're going to have to disable the light before we hack our way in through the door."

"No, I have a better idea," Zack said as the others turned to him. "We'll make our own door somewhere else."

"We're trying to keep it quiet. Blowing a hole in a wall is loud," Suna grumbled as she weighed the option.

"Who said anything about blowing a hole?" He waggled the hilt of his lightsaber in the faint starlight. Rajac nodded and motioned toward the building.

They approached the wall soundlessly and formed a loose perimeter around Zack as he worked his green blade through the thick durasteel. He soon cut a two meter circle and used the Force to gently pull the excised metal out and set it softly on the ground. Zack looked at them and nodded and ducked into the hole with the others close behind.

They were in a store room, with crates and barrels and boxes of all sorts of items surrounding them. "Main hallway is through that door. Main power core is supposed to be thirty meters beyond," Rajac said after one last consultation with his pad. He shoved it into one of his suit's pockets and checked his blaster. "Ready?"

"The hallway seems to be clear," Cody said as he opened his eyes. "This end of it, at least. I think everyone is closer to the core."

"They probably are. If this place is set up like a standard Imp sensor station, there'll be a large control room and operations center close to the core. Let's go." Rajac nudged the door latch with his elbow and it slid open. He poked his head out and heard only the distant thrum of machinery and voices. He waved them on and they set off down the hall, guns drawn and thumbs over the activation stud on lightsabers.

A tingle raced up Cody's spine and the hairs on the back of his neck jumped to attention. He opened his mouth to warn the others but was drowned out by the rumble and shockwave from a series of massive explosions. They were thrown to the ground and alarms started going off.

"What was that?" Suna yelled as the first white-clad trooper came out of a doorway ahead of them. She raised her blaster and squeezed off a shot and dropped him to the polished floor.

"I think that was our sparkler," Rajac said with a frown as he got to his feet. "Our very early sparkler. Come on!"

"Tanner?" Cody asked quietly.

"I don't know. We'll find out when we're finished."

Stealth was now out of the question so they dashed down the corridor toward the core. The two stormtroopers stationed at the doors raised their weapons and began firing. Blue and green blades flashed to life and deflected the bolts harmlessly away while Rajac and Suna shot them both down on the run. The group skidded to a halt at the doors and Suna jammed the end of an electronic probe into the panel and tapped buttons.

"No good. It's locked down and I'll have to hack through it. Two minutes."

"We don't have that long," Cody said as he stepped to the door. "I can feel them all getting over the shock of the explosions." Suna stepped back and Cody plunged his lightsaber into the door panel and twisted. The door jerked slightly open before slamming back against both sides of the frame and coming to rest with barely a meter between them.

"I've got to get one of those," Suna muttered as she squeezed into the room.

Rajac opened the satchel and began tossing the explosives to the others. "Work fast!" he ordered as they began sticking them to every surface within reach. Just as quickly as they began, they were finished and raced out the jammed door. Blaster bolts whined around them as they ran until Cody waved a hand and pushed the barrels of their blasters towards the floor, buying them the desperate seconds they needed to reach the store room and escape through their hastily cut hole.

Giant tongues of flame were licking the sky to their east as they caught a quick glimpse of what had been the speeder garage and a handful of stormtroopers were trying to quench the flames, oblivious to the Rebels. Rajac hurried them on toward the safety of the trees. He glanced at the chrono on his wrist and yelled "Down!"

Cody was coiling himself to dive behind a tree when he was shoved in the back by a giant invisible hand and went barreling through the undergrowth. He rolled to a stop in time to look up and see the building fly apart. What were solid walls seconds before were now shattered fragments of durasteel zipping through the darkness in all directions. The large antenna on the roof blasted hundreds of meters into the air before crashing back to the ground in hundreds of thousands of pieces.

"Wow," Zack said as he dusted himself off. A small grin was evident on his face in the flickering fire light. "That stuff worked great." Smaller pieces of debris were still raining down around them.

Cody's mood was more somber than exalted. He'd felt the deaths as the explosives ripped the building apart and it hurt him deeper than he had expected. He'd killed in combat before but this was different. Death from a distance didn't sit well with him.

"I beg to differ," a voice said from behind them. Cody recognized the presence in the Force as Tanner. "I can't wait to get back to tell them that it needs more testing." Tanner stepped into the slight moonlight and the group could see that he was much the worse for wear. He was missing large clumps of hair and most of his exposed skin was red and weeping.

"Is that why our diversion went off early?" Rajac asked as he pulled a small medkit from his pack and offered it to the man. Tanner shook his head and Rajac put it away.

"_Early_? It just about went off in my _hand_," the man said as he knelt with them. "I pulled one out and set the timer, right? I was sticking it to the bottom of one of the speeders when I happened to glance at the countdown and saw that it had reset itself to ten seconds. I crawled out from under that speeder like Vader himself was after me. Left my pack, left my blaster, left the satchel, everything really, and ran. It threw me a good hundred meters into the trees when it went off."

"Can you move?" Rajac asked him and Tanner nodded affirmatively. "Good. Because we can swap stories and lick our wounds later. We need to get out of here before the rest of the stormies from the barracks show up." Suna tossed him a small blaster pistol and they disappeared silently into the thick night air and made for their rendezvous point.

Retracing their steps through the dry stream bed, Cody once again had the sensation of being watched. It was stronger this time, closer. He opened himself further to the Force and felt a dark presence coming their way.

"I feel it, too," Zack said.

"What is it?" Rajac asked as he motioned the group to the ground.

"Something is coming," Zack said from his squat. "Something evil." He happened to look down just in time to see a small, fallen twig vibrating on the forest floor. It seemed to jump rhythmically and as the seconds passed, it jumped higher and higher. "Something big," Zack added.

"Let's go. We'll try to skirt it and still make it to the extraction point," Rajac announced. They set off at a fast clip, scrambling over the bank of the stream and deeper into the trees. The sounds of monstrous steps started to fall behind them but Cody's sense of unease only grew. Rajac pulled his pad from his pocket and checked their position.

"Ten degrees to the west and we'll-"

"Down!" Zack screamed, giving the others a shove in the Force. He spun in a flash and his lightsaber flared to life just in time to cleave a flying tree trunk that was wider than he was. Its smoldering ends cast a soft glow in their small clearing. The ground shook again as the others scrambled to their feet. "Show yourself!" he yelled. A huge shape resolved into being in the moonlight.

"I don't believe it," Rajac said as he trained his gun on the vaguely bipedal shape. "A Rancor."

The beast, five meters high and all teeth and claws, advanced as quickly as the Rebels backpedaled. A hooded figure laughed from the monster's back.

"You defile our world with your presence, pathetic Jedi," the feminine voice called to them over the beast's roar. "I will now cleanse it!" She flipped from the Rancor's back and landed before them in a flourish.

"You aren't cleansing anything," Suna replied as she took aim. Rajac and Tanner also raised their blasters.

"You cannot hit what you cannot _see_!" the woman screeched. She waved a hand and the three Rebels' hands went to their faces. The twins felt the wave of the Dark Side wash over them as well but countered it.

"I'm blind!" Suna called out as she dropped her blaster and staggered sideways.

"You witch!" Tanner exclaimed as he shot wildly into the night. His blaster was suddenly yanked from his hands and spun into the underbrush.

"No, not just a witch," the woman replied softly, "a Nightsister." She threw back her cowl and the twins could see intricate tattoos and markings etched onto her face and down her neck. She smiled wickedly and Cody felt a cold chill run down his spine.

A long hand, as covered with designs as the rest of her, reached into the folds of her robes and pulled out a smooth-handled lightsaber. She cackled as she ignited it and the beast roared as the blade spilled its lonesome yellow light on the ground.

"This must be what Master Ishalka was talking about," Cody said as he activated his blade.

"You think?" Zack retorted as they moved a few meters apart and readied themselves.

"It is time to feed," the Nightsister announced and pointed a finger at the three blinded soldiers. To Cody's horror, the rancor leapt over her and dashed for the Rebels. He managed to grab its foot in the Force and tugged, sending the beast sprawling onto its face in the dirt and leaves. It rageful scream boomed in the night and it lashed out with a huge claw. Zack pushed Rajac to the ground a split second before the claw would have disemboweled him.

"Interfering younglings," the witch called. She swept her arm and waves of dark energy crashed over them, staggering Zack and sending Cody to a knee. Their minds still muddled, they barely dodged out of the way as the very ground under them began to fracture. From his back Cody saw another large tree cartwheeling at him. He raised a hand and concentrated and shoved. The tree skimmed over him by less than a meter, showering him with dirt from its roots but sparing him.

A roar followed immediately by a human scream fell on them. Their attention shifted away from the Nightsister to the rancor and they watched in horror as Tanner was stuck by a massive paw and sent tumbling through the air. They heard a wet thud and then nothing.

"Can you handle her?" Zack asked as he helped Cody to his feet.

"We'll find out. Go stop that thing." Zack sprinted away while Cody calmly strode toward the witch.

"Fear," the witch spoke and Cody was assaulted by feelings of terror. His mind saw Zack falling to the rancor and himself struck down by the witch's lightsaber. His muscles trembled as panic coursed through his body and his feet seemed rooted in place.

Cody took a long, deep breath and centered himself. "No," he said forcefully and tore through the terror. He was upon her and his hands seemed to move on their own accord as their lightsabers clashed. He could almost taste the anger and hatred that fueled her movements and he pitied her. He swung and parried and sidestepped without thought.

"You cannot win this fight," he told the witch as they circled. "Surrender."

"A Nightsister never surrenders to a male. You are beneath me."

The witch reached out a hand, its palm lit by dark lightning. Cody instinctively threw his head to the side and felt as well as heard the crackling as the bolt of energy sizzled by his ear. Their blades sparked again as he waited for an opening. He saw one and struck, following a backhanded clout to her head with a snap kick to her stomach. She spun backward and then lunged at him with a desperate strike. Cody blocked it and buried the tip of his lightsaber in her chest. The light left her eyes and Cody pulled his blade back before she skewered herself on it.

Zack had led the beast away from the helpless Rebels and was batting at its hands when it struck at him. The monster's skin was tough and his strikes did little more than anger it further. He clipped a talon almost to the skin and jumped to avoid a massive fist smashing down on him. He landed safely away and looked at the crater where he had just been standing.

He dove between the rancor's legs and came to his feet behind it. Zack dodged a stomp and swung his lightsaber at the backs of the monster's legs and severed the tendons. It fell with a screech and he used the Force to jump onto its back. He grabbed a hold on a spiny scale with one hand and used the other to sink his blade into the monster's skull. It shrieked again and fell forward and he jumped off. Zack watched with sadness as the creature died, knowing that the witch had corrupted it with the Dark Side. He shot a look of malice over at the witch's corpse and then shook his head.

Cody pulled the lightsaber from the witch's dead hand and deactivated it. He stuck it in his robes and began walking toward Zack and the Rebels.

"What was that thing?" Rajac asked as they stood over Tanner's body a short while later. His eyesight had returned shortly after the Nightsister's death but Suna's was still cloudy. He stuck the blade of his entrenching tool in the dirt and waited for the boys' answer.

"Some sort of Dark Side witch," Cody told him. "That's all I know."

"A primitive Jedi?"

"I wouldn't call her primitive. She was young but very well trained in skills I've never heard of."

"I fought across the galaxy in the Clone Wars and I never heard of them or this cursed planet," he spat.

"There are, or were," Zack said with a hint of sadness in his voice, "many Force traditions. Light and dark."

"Are there more of them?"

"More witches? Likely so. Our master warned us of this planet years ago. We should go."

"I agree." They lowered Tanner's body into the hastily dug grave and covered him with the rich soil. Rajac saluted the grave and they set off. They trudged through the jungle without saying a word, each replaying the mission in their mind and dealing with the death of their teammate in their own way.

Suna activated their beacon when they reached the small clearing and it wasn't long before they heard the rumble of engines heading their way. Five ropes dropped through the gap in the canopy and the squad was hoisted into the freighter. Vega was there to meet them and his head dropped slightly once they were safely inside.

"Tanner didn't make it?" he asked solemnly.

"No," Suna answered as she slung her gear in a bin. "Mission complete, though. Get us off this dirtball." Rajac nodded his assent and Vega returned to the cockpit. They raced through Dathomir's gravity well at top speed and jumped the second they were clear.

_This chapter brings me to one of the points in the SW universe that makes me scratch my head: how everyone in the galaxy suddenly doesn't believe that the Force or the Jedi ever existed after Ep 3 and until the end of the original trilogy. I'm of the opinion that George Lucas wrote himself into a corner with that and then tried to half-ass explain it away by saying that the Emperor erased just about every last trace of them from the records and that four _quadrillion_ beings just forgot about them. Nope._

_That's like...someone telling me that the Soviet Union never existed and erasing all the encyclopedias and news stories and whatever else. I'll still know it _did_ exist because I was alive and aware of it before it dissolved. You can tell me it never happened but I know better. They were the "bad guys" when I was growing up and I highly doubt I'd forget something like that._

_Anyway, my little rant is over. I would have had this up at least two weeks ago but work killed me and I ended up spending quite a bit of my free time working on a few other stories that will be appearing here in the next few weeks._

_Thanks for reading!_


	6. Chapter 6

Zack stepped into the small lounge and found his brother sitting cross-legged on a chair with his eyes closed. He watched as Cody's chest rhythmically rose and fell and debated coming back later.

"Can I help you, Zack?" he opened his eyes and saw Zack leaning against the bulkhead.

"I didn't want to bother you but are you feeling okay? You haven't said a word since we left Dathomir."

"I am but I'm not. I've been thinking about the mission."

"It worked out perfectly, didn't it?" Zack said excitedly. "We went in, set the bombs, and blew the place sky high."

"In case you don't recall, we also lost Tanner on the way out," Cody reminded him. "And Suna is blaming herself for his death." Zack's buoyant mood instantly deflated.

"I know we did. Is that what's bothering you? The two of them?"

"No, I accept that we'll take losses. I don't like it but I accept it, just like Suna will have to if she wants to keep on fighting. What's bothering me is how we completed the mission."

"You're going to have to explain that to me because I'm not seeing a problem with it."

"Jedi aren't supposed to be destroyers, Zack. We're supposed to be preservers."

"We preserved the Alliance's ability to operate in this sector, Cody."

"A preserver of _life, _Zack. We destroyed."

"They were Imperials. They signed up for that. They knew what they were getting into."

"I know they did. And before you say it, yes, I know we're in the middle of a war. Things are going to happen that should shock everyone but don't because we're fighting for survival. But it doesn't mean that they're _right _or that we should be involved with them."

"So what are you saying here, Cody? Are you going to ask Vega to drop you off at the first planet he finds so you can keep your hands clean?"

"No, nothing like that. The Empire is evil and it must be stopped."

"Then what are we going to do? Somehow convince the Emperor and Mon Mothma to sit down and play a winner-take-all game of sabacc?"

"Of course not." Cody ran a hand through his hair and exhaled slowly as he tried to figure out how to explain his position. "Didn't it feel wrong to you? Even a little?"

"Honestly? No. We got our job done and some Imperials died in the process. They- wait, is that what's getting to you? It is, isn't it?" It was Zack's turn to look exasperated. "They weren't innocent, Cody. They lost any claim to that the second they put on the white armor."

"I don't know if we should keep working with Rajac and his team," Cody said, cutting directly to the chase.

"What? I can't think of a better place for us to be. They go in and do quick and dirty jobs and are out before the Imps know it. Our skills match up with them perfectly."

"It's the dirty part I don't like, Zack. I don't like the idea of us going looking for a fight. I'm afraid that..." Cody said before trailing off.

"That the Dark Side will get me," Zack finished.

"You _and_ me. When the bomb went off it felt like a small version of what I felt when the Empire destroyed Alderaan. I felt their lives snuffed out like a candle."

"Cody," Zack said softly, "that's war. It's like..." Zack's search for a suitable analogy was cut short when the ship jolted them to the floor. The lights dimmed, fluttered, and went out and their bodies lifted from the deck. They were floating weightlessly for a few seconds in the dark before the red emergency lights flicked on.

"What was that?" Cody yelled to the cockpit. His nose wrinkled at the scent of burning insulation.

"Something happened to the power core!" Rajac called back. "Not sure what caused it but if we don't get it fixed in the next hour or so it won't matter since it fried most of the emergency systems." Cody heard the hiss of the fire suppression system as Vega came floating past them.

"We might have stressed the ship too much when we inserted on Dathomir. Or it could just be old. Either way, it yanked us out of hyperspace and shorted out just about everything in the cockpit except for the chrono," he said as he came to rest across from them. "You two know much about power cores and hyperdrives?"

"Not really," Cody admitted.

"That's okay. Six hands are still better than two." He pushed off and swam through the corridor and the twins followed. Vega manhandled the door to the engine room open and winced.

"What's that smell?"

"That would be the smell of a CHF, Zack."

"What's that?"

"A catastrophic hyperdrive failure. What you're smelling is the coolant that was formerly inside the hyperdrive and is now pooling on the floor beneath it. Or floating around it."

"It smells awful."

"The smell won't kill you, at least I think it won't, but don't touch it unless you want to radically lose weight."

"That won't be a problem."

They stood back as the man surveyed the room. "Well, I've seen worse," he finally said. Zack was skeptical of that assessment as he looked at what used to be the hyperdrive. A crack large enough for him to stick an arm through now marred the device's surface. Cody used the Force to push a few droplets of coolant to the other side of the room.

"Good news or bad news?" Vega had been tinkering with the core for a few quiet minutes.

"Good," Cody told him.

"The good news is that I think the core itself isn't damaged but the conduits leading from it are shot. Once we replace those, we can restart the core and have oxygen and gravity."

"What's the bad news?"

"Bad news is that we're going to have to limp back to the _Event Horizon _on the back-up hyperdrive. You don't have any important plans in the next eighteen to twenty hours do you?"

"We don't now," Zack said. "What can we do to help?"

"One of you can help me with the conduits and the other can try to keep all that goo from eating holes in us."

Vega pulled two pairs of magnetic pads from a bin and he and Zack slid them over their knees to stick themselves to the deck as they worked. Cody used the Force to anchor himself in place while he collected the leaked coolant into a floating, caustic ball. "What should I do with this?" he asked after he was finished. Vega looked up and was surprised to see the room cleared so fast.

"Once we get power restored and can cycle the airlock, we'll space it. Can you hold it that long?"

"I should be able to. I've done harder things training."

It was nearly a full standard day before they finally rejoined the _Event Horizon_, two stops for further repairs and strained nerves later. Cody could feel the tension bleed away from the others as the lights in the distance slowly resolved into their mother ship and its screen of smaller vessels.

"I never thought I'd be so glad to be heading back to Ommel," Vega quipped as he piloted the ship in closer. They passed through the barrier and he set the ship down in an out of the way corner of the hangar.

"Looks like we have a welcoming committee," Zack said as he looked through the view screen at a group rapidly approaching.

"Ommel, a few Alliance security guys, a woman I don't recognize, and a droid," Vega told him. "The woman looks important."

"Let's go find out," Rajac announced.

"This doesn't feel right," Zack whispered to his brother as they filed down the ramp. "Lots of anxiety just for our return."

Cody closed his eyes and reached out. "There is, but I don't think it's directed at us. It's coming off Commander Ommel in waves. I don't think he likes that woman he's with."

"Lieutenant Rajac, my condolences on the loss of your crew member," the unknown, a human female, said as they approached.

"I'm afraid you have me at a disadvantage," he said as he stuck out a hand. She shook it briskly.

"It will have to remain that way, I'm afraid."

"Ah, you're a spook," Vega commented.

"I've been called worse," she replied. "May we talk, Lieutenant? In private?" Rajac nodded and the small entourage headed away from the bustle of the hangar bay.

"Everything looks disorganized," Zack said to no one in particular. Cody looked around and noticed he was right. Before, the hangar had been organized chaos but now it seemed to be nothing but a jumbled mess.

"Yes, it seems that the Empire somehow managed to infect the majority of our droids in this sector with some sort of virus. Our quartermaster droid shut itself down and wiped its memory as did as the majority of our astromechs. We had to pull a number of the older astromechs out of storage," Ommel said, shooting a glance at the little droid rolling behind them. "Unfortunately, we don't have an older model of the other droid. Hence the chaos."

"This is an R-1 droid, Zack. They phased these out way before we were born."

"That's right, young Jedi," Ommel said, the usual frostiness toward the twins gone for the first time that they'd noticed. "Remember why?"

"They tended to develop eccentricities that even a mindwipe wouldn't fix."

"You know your droids. And this one seems to be doing little else but following us around despite there being a hundred better uses of its talents." Ommel scowled at the droid but it ignored him.

Cody stopped and turned to the droid. He bent down to one knee and looked into its receptor. "R-1, the ship we came in on suffered major damage to its systems. Can you run a thorough diagnostic check on it for us?" The droid's top spun and it chattered and blatted and sped off back to their ship.

"Another use of your Force, young Jedi?"

"No, I don't know why it listened like that," Cody shrugged.

"No matter. As long as it is doing something," Ommel said as he motioned the group into a small office. The security personnel remained outside as he closed the door.

"I'll make this short," the woman said as she pulled a datapad out from a pouch on her hip. "We're on a very tight time frame."

"We are used to that," Rajac said grimly.

"The Alliance is sending a diplomatic mission to meet with a Hutt to negotiate usage of his systems as staging areas for future ventures against the Empire. However," she said as she activated the datapad and line after line of Huttese with Basic translations filled the air above the pad, "they will not allow our normal security on the planet. They claim that it could destabilize the peace they have with the Empire if our troops were seen in his palace."

"Then send them undercover," Ommel said, making it obvious that he was just as in the dark about what the woman wanted as the crew was.

"We considered that and then we learned of the treasure that you discovered on Vandyne, Lieutenant Rajac."

"So you want us to go with them. As back-up? In case the commander didn't tell you, half my team is still on Vandyne and the other half is currently unfit for duty."

"He relayed the message and you will be able to remain with her and get her back on her feet. We only require the young Jedi for this mission. The last thing a Hutt would expect is something that is rumored to no longer exist."

Cody felt Ommel bristle slightly and it took a second for him to figure out the reason behind it. _Now that he knows we can be useful to him, Ommel doesn't want to let us out of his sight. It's like they say, possession is nine-tenths of the law. _Cody swallowed a wry grin and returned his attention to the woman in front of him.

"So you want to use these two boys as your security?" Ommel asked. "That's it?"

"According to your reports, they have acquitted themselves very nicely since their arrival. We think they are the perfect fit for what should be a very routine diplomatic mission. And if it does go sour, they will be able to cover our exit."

Zack saw a flash of irritation flicker across Rajac's face. _Was he mad for being sidelined in an important mission? Or is he possibly worried about us being in over our head? _Zack felt the answer was more likely a combination of both.

The conversation lasted another few minutes but it was apparent that the outcome had already been decided before it even began and any further talk was intended solely to soothe Ommel's ruffled feathers. The two young Jedi would depart on the mission in a few hours and Ommel would get them back when it was finished. The woman left the room and the door slid shut behind her.

"Wretched woman," Ommel said once they were alone. "I don't see the point of wasting our time when she was going to take you anyway."

"She's a spook, Commander," Vega chimed, "that's how Intel operates. They go in with their blank check and cash it whenever it suits them."

Their small group made their way back to the damaged vessel and found the droid waiting for them. It activated its projector as they approached and a long list of necessary repairs appeared and hung in the air above its dome.

"Might as well scrap it and use it for parts," Zack said as he read through the list. The droid twittered and another block of text replaced the first.

"Maybe not," Cody replied. "If the droid is right, the majority of the damage can simply be bypassed and it'll still be spaceworthy. Not pretty, but it'll fly."

"I guess we'll see when we get back from wherever we're going. Come on, let's catch a little rest while we can."

"Good work, R-1," Cody said as he patted the droid. "See if you can't help Rajac and the techs get this old thing up and running before we get back." The droid flashed a pair of lights and zipped off and up the ramp into the ship's interior.

"Take care of yourself, boys," Rajac said to them and, surprising them both, put a paternal hand on each of their shoulders. "Diplomatic missions tend to end up just as nasty as any other. The only difference is that you know who your enemy is on missions like ours."

"We'll be okay, Rajac. Worry about Suna."

"She'll be fine, Cody. She's strong but just needs time. We'll see you when we see you."

Cody awoke from his first restful sleep in days. He could call on the Force to refresh himself for a time but nothing beat seven hours of shut-eye. He dressed in his new robes, royal blue and professional looking instead of brown and well-worn. Lightsabers tucked into inner pockets, he stepped out of his cabin and into the corridor.

Zack's bed had been empty so Cody walked through the quiet ship searching for his brother. The galley was his first stop but he only found one of the diplomats and was greeted with a curt nod. He walked on and soon found him in the observation deck.

"I was wondering if you were going to wake up before we came out of hyperspace," Zack said as Cody sat across from him.

"Did you sleep?"

"A little. My mind kept turning over everything they told us in the briefing after we boarded."

"And?" Cody could feel there was more behind Zack's words and waited for the explanation.

"It seems like there's more to this than just a simple meeting. Why are they only sending two diplomats? Why, if they're worried about Imperial attention, are they meeting with the Hutt at his stronghold instead of meeting one of his proxies somewhere less noticeable?"

"You think there's a secret agenda?"

"I know there is. I just can't figure out _what_ it is. I don't like it."

_Sorry it's short but think of it as a prelude to a long couple of chapters. And I hope you caught who R-1 is supposed to be. (Arwin just in case you didn't.) There's more to come soon._


	7. Chapter 7

They jumped into the shadow of the Hutt world of Sleheyron and it hung in the sky before them like a giant bruise; mottled browns, greens, and yellows with the occasional bright spots scattered across the planet's surface. The twins were standing at the rear of the expansive cockpit as the pilots went about preparing for the final approach. One small, fuzzy diplomat worked at a computer screen while the other nervously paced.

"He's checked his comlink every minute since we've been in-system," Zack told Cody in a low voice. "He's waiting for something."

Cody expanded his senses but felt nothing but the crew's nervousness. "Rajac was right. In his line of work you know what to expect."

"That's why this cloak and dagger keep-the-kids-in-the-dark stuff doesn't sit well with me."

"If we needed to know, I'm sure they'd tell us," Cody argued.

"They should, but they probably wouldn't."

"That's just how it works."

"Doesn't mean it's right. If things go wrong, who's going to be the ones to get us out of there in as few pieces as possible? It's certainly not them." Zack considered the two ambassadors in front of him. "The older one with the comlink addiction? He will be absolutely useless in a fight. The other one, whatever species she is, will be equally worthless. And that leaves us."

"That's why we're here. They're diplomats, Zack, their job is to talk, not to fight."

"No, there's more to all this than just that. It's so strong I can almost taste it."

"I don't feel anything out of the ordinary."

"It's there. Trust me. Don't let your attention drop for a second."

"I hope you boys got your naps in while we were in hyperspace," the human, Chelko, told them. "Because it's almost time to get to work." He brushed past the twins and disappeared into the aft of the ship.

Cody felt Zack bristle as the man passed and nearly put a restraining hand on his brother's shoulder. The small, furry creature tried to smile sympathetically as she followed the man out of the cockpit.

"And his attitude isn't helping anything, either," Zack complained once they were out of earshot. "He hasn't said a single thing that hasn't been either condescending or smart-mouthed since we left the _Event Horizon_."

"He might not want us here. Or maybe doesn't think he needs us," Cody said rationally.

"He could at least be politely rude," Zack retorted, his eyes following the man's back before he vanished behind a bulkhead.

"You need to calm down and focus yourself. He could be nervous and about the meeting and he's just lashing out."

"He's lucky we're on the same side or I'd show him how a Jedi, even a _kid _Jedi, lashes out."

"Zack..."

"I'm fine."

"You're worrying me."

"I'm good, I promise. I'm just tense over all this secrecy and whatever it is I'm feeling."

"We've still got nearly an hour before we land. Why don't you go find a quiet corner and meditate for a bit? See if you can't cool your emotions."

"I think I might," Zack said with a sigh. He didn't need the Force to hear the frustration in Cody's voice.

Cody's unease didn't let up when Zack left him on the bridge to clear his mind. He took a deep breath and tried to empty all thoughts from his head and let the Force flow through him. He sought out any hints of the trouble Zack was sensing but came up empty handed. He opened his eyes again and shook his head, puzzled. If it was out there, he couldn't sense it. Cody locked his hands over the back of a chair and waited.

Sleheyron jumped onto Zack's list of least favorite planets the second they descended the ramp and stepped onto the pitted landing pad. The air was incredibly humid and filled with the sound of millions of buzzing and chirping insects as well as the fetid odor of a nearby swamp. "Leave it to a Hutt to consider a place like this a paradise world," he muttered as the ramp raised and locked behind them. Cody quietly agreed as they fell into step a dozen paces behind the two ambassadors.

There was no speeder transport arranged for them, another piece to their clandestine mission, Zack supposed, so by the time they'd reached the halfway point on their trek to the Hutt's palace, his underclothes were soaked and sticking to his body like a second skin. He stole a glance at his brother and saw that Cody was his usual calm, focused self.

"Relax, Zack. Everything is going according to plan so far."

"It might be," Zack retorted, "if we knew what the plan actually was. I still don't buy that this is anything like what we've been told. It just feels wrong."

"Is that the Force speaking or is that you?"

"I think it's both. You still don't feel it?"

"I don't."

Zack scowled. "It's there. It feels like a storm that's about to break all over us."

Cody studied Zack for a brief moment. "You might be sensing some of the scum we're going to be encountering soon. Hutts aren't known for keeping a high standard of associates."

"Maybe. Either way, stay alert," he said. Inside, Zack was troubled. Cody had always been better at sensing the flow of the Force than he was. If Cody didn't feel it, could it just be his imagination? His eyes never stayed on the same target for more than a fraction of a second and inside his robes his hand tightened around the hilt of his lightsaber.

"We come for an audience with His Largeness Rebraca the Hutt," Chelko said a short while later as they stood at the gates of the palace. "He is expecting us." The portly human handed over a small datapad to the guard and the group waited as it was fed into a reader. A porcine Gammorean passed a small scanner over the ambassadors and waved them ahead. The guard came to the twins and began to scan them as well.

"We are unarmed," Cody said with a small gesture. "We may pass." The Gammorean squeaked his assent and stepped aside. "Thank you," Cody said with a nod and they joined the diplomats as they waited for the doors to creak open. They stepped in through the oversized doors and were met by a small contingent of armed riffraff.

"This way," a Rodian grumbled in broken Basic as he led them through a maze of corridors. Cody quickly became certain they were being led in circles in an attempt to make them think the palace larger and grander than it was. After nearly ten minutes of walking they arrived at a small room and were ushered inside. "Refreshments will be served," the Rodian croaked before shutting the door on them.

"Hutt hospitality at its finest," Zack said as he took up station near the door and tried to shake off his growing frustration.

"They don't run five-nova establishments, young man," Chelko said dismissively, "they run crime rings. I think we should be satisfied that we are inside in the relative cool and not standing in a dungeon with our hands in chains." Zack swallowed the retort that was forming on his tongue and focused on not disliking the man so intently.

Chelko had checked his comlink nearly thirty times when the door abruptly opened and a thoroughly scratched and dented droid stepped through and into the room. "I am MOS-B at your disposal." The droid gave a rusty bow before continuing. "His Rotundness Rebraca the Hutt says that he will be with you shortly and-"

Zack tuned the droid out as the feeling of unease he had been feeling suddenly began to boil within him. His eyes quickly locked with Cody's and his brother nodded.

"I feel it now," he whispered.

"MOS-B, what's going on?" Zack asked as he stood. "What's happening?"

"Everything is perfectly under control, young sir," the droid replied just as the palace shook. Dust rained down from the ceiling and coated everything in the room in a fine sandy film.

"Is it?" Cody asked.

"What's going on, droid?" the ambassador asked furiously as he wiped his robes clean.

"There seems to be a small internecine disturbance on the outskirts of the-"

"Get down!" Zack screamed and threw himself at Chelko. A split second later nearly half of the ceiling collapsed, burying most of the room under large fragments of stone.

"A small disturbance doesn't bring down the palace," Zack said as he shifted a piece of stone from his shoulder.

"We've got to get out of here," Cody announced as he frantically searched through the rubble for the second ambassador.

"No!" Chelko groaned, "we have to finish the mission." Cody looked over and saw the man trying to pull himself out from under a pile of stones.

"This mission is over!" Zack shouted back as he used the Force to lift the heavy stones away from the man. He felt his stomach flip when he saw the condition of the man's lower body. He looked over to Cody and saw he had uncovered the alien. "Is she...?"

"She's gone."

"Cody, can we move him?" Cody hurriedly moved over to the diplomat and gave him a quick examination. He looked up from the man's broken body and gave Zack a hopeless look.

"We're going to have to, Zack. If we stay here, he'll die for sure. I can patch him up a little, maybe stop the bleeding, but I don't know." As if to emphasize his remark, the palace shook again and a large piece of stone fell from the ceiling a few meters up the hallway.

All the fears Zack had been harboring about the mission had coalesced around them as Cody began ripping pieces from his robe to use as makeshift bandages. Zack put his ear to the door and heard the din of hundreds of voices and sounds through the metal.

"Do what you can, Cody. As soon as he's safe to move, we're out of here."

"We cannot leave," the wounded man protested again. "What we are doing here is vital to the future of the Alliance."

"We are leaving and we're leaving now," Zack retorted. "This has felt wrong since the second I stepped on board your ship. We get here and suddenly the palace comes under attack? I don't like any of it and we're going to cut our losses. The Alliance can send someone else to negotiate the treaty." Zack watched the man's face closely and narrowly avoided the urge to dive into his mind to find out exactly what was so important. Instead he waited as calmly as he could while the sounds of alarms and blaster bolts and last breaths made their way through the stone walls.

Cody finished his triage moments later and hoisted the man up as gently as he could and leaned him over a shoulder. His face rippled with a grimace as he balanced the man's weight. Once settled, he nodded to his brother who punched the button to open the door.

Many of the lights in the ceiling were out as they crept into the hallway. "MOS-B, what's the quickest way out of the palace?" Zack asked as he drew and ignited his lightsaber.

"The fastest way through the palace and back to the landing facilities is that way," the droid said, pointing a spindly arm down a corridor.

They advanced quickly but cautiously before a right-handed bend in the hall led them into a large audience chamber and into the middle of everything. Alloy blades clashed and sliced and the sounds of dozens of blasters echoed harshly in the room. The corpulent Hutt was in one corner giving orders to his small army. His bulbous eyes looked in their direction and the twins, even at a fair distance, could see that he was shaking with rage.

"The Almighty Rebraca says that this outrage is your fault," the droid calmly translated after the Hutt jabbed a chubby arm at them and bellowed. "You arrive and bring civil war to his throne. He says that he will show you all one hundred ways to nearly die, each more terrible than the last, before he-"

Zack turned his attention away from the giant worm and locked his gaze on the bleeding diplomat. "We aren't responsible for any of this, right? We _aren't _responsible for it, are we?"

"No, this is not our doing, I swear it," the man groaned.

"It better not be." In the few seconds it took to get the confirmation, a portion of the Hutt's forces had begun charging in their direction and Zack swung his lightsaber and cleaved through a Nikto that had unluckily been at the head of the pack.

"MOS-B, we need another way out of here," Cody said as he edged a step closer to the wall.

"The fastest way out of the palace is still down the corridor behind Master Rebraca," the droid said fussily, nodding his head at the sea of warring bodies and spilled internal fluids.

"None of us are going to make it through that," Zack said, "not me, not my brother, not this wounded man, and definitely not you. An alternate route would be great." He deflected a stray blaster bolt into the ceiling.

"Don't Hutts always have a hundred and one secret ways out of their palaces?" Cody asked as they started backing down the hallway, flicking the fingers of one hand and sending a cloud of dust from the floor to slow their pursuers. Zack wrapped the invisible hand of the Force around another's snout and slammed him headfirst into the ground.

"That number would be silly," MOS-B told him. "Master Rebraca only has six."

"Well do you think that you could lead us to one of them?" Zack shouted.

"I do believe I can. There is an access hatch to one of the passages to His Largeness' personal vessel approximately one hundred and twelve meters behind us."

"Lead the way," Zack told the droid as he started to walk backwards behind the others to keep their tail clear.

The droid shuffled along with the Jedi close behind it, each meter seeming to last twenty. Finally the droid stopped and touched a recessed switch. The entire wall swung inward and a dimly lit hallway stretched out before them.

"This way, young sirs." The droid led Cody down the path while Zack remained at the door.

"Come on, Zack!" Cody called back once he realized his brother wasn't with them.

"You go on, get him to the ship. I'll hold them off and join you."

Cody could feel the lust for battle in his brother's voice without even using the Force. "No you won't! Come back here now!" He stopped in his tracks and waited.

"Cody, go!" Cody began walking back up the path. "What are you doing?" Zack called out as he felt Cody approach.

"We're leaving together or we're not leaving," he calmly replied.

Zack growled low in his throat and reached out with the Force and pulled on the wall, slamming it shut. "Fine, let's go." Cody could tell he wasn't happy about the situation but didn't care.

They moved quickly, soon finding themselves emerging into a small hanger with a heavily modified and obviously expensive ship sitting before them. They made for the ramp and were inside after eliminating the lone Hutt guard just inside the hatch. Zack tossed his body out onto the landing pad and raced to the cockpit. MOS-B closed the ramp and followed as fast as he could.

"Looks like the Hutt was of the paranoid kind. The ship is just about ready to take off," Zack said as he threw himself down into the copilot's chair. "How's the ambassador?"

"Bad," Cody said as he strapped the man into a jump seat behind Zack. He climbed into the pilot's seat and joined his brother in throwing switches and entering commands. "MOS-B, can you keep an eye on him while we get out of here?"

"I can. Humanoid physiology and its subsequent maintenance is one of my sub-specialties. Though, I don't know how much I can do in this case."

"Just do what you can," Cody told the droid as he powered the craft's repulsor coils and steered toward the opening in the wall. He barely missed clipping the roof of the hangar and unconsciously ducked.

"Yeah, you're the good pilot," Zack said as he settled back and let Cody do his thing.

"This ship might look good but it handles like an overloaded garbage scow in the atmosphere," Cody replied as he tightened his grip. "Get our other ship on the com and tell them to get back to the _Event Horizon_, Zack. We'll meet them there."

"Copy that."

"We can't leave orbit," Chelko rasped after the droid injected him with a pain killer.

Zack spun his chair around and stared at the man. "Why not? What was so important about this mission?"

"We...were waiting for a message," the man said.

"You know, I think it's about time you come clean with us," Zack said as he leaned forward into the man's bruised face.

"Easy, Zack," Cody murmured without turning around.

"I think he at least owes us an explanation," Zack grumbled. Further argument was cut off by a slow but steady beeping from the man's robes. Zack shook his head and turned away as the man dug the comlink out of a pocket.

"We've got to get to Harana as soon as possible," Chelko said after he was finished reading the message.

"No, we've got to get you back to the _Event Horizon _and get you patched up or else you are probably going to die," Cody told him.

"You don't understand," he said with a shake of his head, "this is more important than my life or yours."

"You're right, I don't. Why don't you make me understand?" Zack demanded.

The man suddenly sounded very old. "The signing of the treaty on Sleheyron was a front for a far bigger Alliance plan," he said. Zack's eyes met his brother's and Cody could see _I told you so _gleaming in them. "It was the final step for Operation Reforger."

"Never heard of it," Zack admitted.

"Nor should you. Reforger is a massive ultra-secret plan to liberate nearly a dozen Nebulon-B frigates, just like your _Event Horizon,_ from the orbital dockyards on Kuat."

"What?" Cody said in amazement. "How is that possible?"

"The Alliance has been slipping agents into the work crews for the last standard year as the ships near completion and we've been working behind the scenes to get the command codes to operate them."

"And that's what you were going to pick up on Sleheyron?" Cody asked.

"Correct," Chelko turned away and coughed up a mouthful of blood, "but the agent that had the codes never made contact."

"He's on Harana?" Zack questioned and the man nodded slightly. "Why didn't he just transmit the codes and save all this trouble?"

"Two reasons. One, the man who obtained the codes for us is the head of one of Kuat's noble houses. He's funneled trillions of credits to the Alliance over the years and it was deemed foolish to put such an important asset at risk. Two, transmitting something as big as the command codes would stick out like a black bantha to the Imperials."

"We'll take you back to the _Event Horizon _and then go after the codes," Zack told him.

"No, you won't. We have to get there as quickly as we can. If I die, I die. The Alliance needs those codes more than it needs me."

"What else haven't you told us?" Zack's frustration returned. "Why the hurry?"

"He never made contact with us because he's in Imperial custody on Harana."

"Of course he is." Zack slammed his chair back around and began plotting a course on the nav computer.

_Each year when summer comes around I always think I'm going to have tons of free time to write. Nope. Every summer I always end up insanely busy doing things I never expect and barely have time to sleep, much less write._

_ I don't want to get anyone's hopes up with a promise of another chapter in a week or two because, realistically, things probably won't slow down until around October. Hopefully I'm wrong but after the month-plus time between this chapter and the last...yeah. _

_ This chapter is the beginning of the end of part one and the pace and action are going to pick up drastically, I promise. Anyway, thanks for putting up with my big delays and I'll get the next bit posted as soon as I can. _


	8. Chapter 8

Cody returned to the bridge and sat down quietly beside his brother. "I put him in a healing trance but I still don't know if he's going to make it," he said as he looked over the controls. "We should be taking him back to the _Event Horizon _instead of jumping across the sector."

"He made his decision, Cody. I don't like it any more than you do but it was his call to make."

Cody busied himself with the readouts and displays as his mind ran through the lengthy conversation they'd had with Chelko before Cody put him under. "The fact that the noble used his own daughter to smuggle the codes out of Kuat, without bothering to tell her, I might add, is still eating away at me."

"We're at war, Cody," Zack reminded him, "sometimes we do things that are horrible."

"Saying that over and over again doesn't make it right, Zack."

"I don't want to have this discussion again," Zack told him. Wartime morals had become something of a sticking point between the two brothers recently. Cody would push the issue only to back off once he felt his brother beginning to become agitated.

"I think we need to."

"No."

"Then I am going to hold a very one-sided conversation and you can listen. I should have done this a while ago but I didn't." Zack settled in for Cody's coming sermon. "I know you believe that bad things are done by both sides during a war and you are probably correct. But," Cody said and paused, "that doesn't mean we should. We're fighting the Empire because of all that they've done and all that they're doing. If we do the same things they do, act like they do, what's the point of fighting them if at the end of the day we're equals?"

Zack hadn't planned on responding to Cody's arguments but couldn't help himself. "Because if we don't do whatever we can to win, we will lose. This isn't a fair fight, Cody. The odds are impossibly stacked against us. If we don't use every card in our hand or weapon at our disposal, we will be wiped from the galaxy like a stain."

"Everything?"

"Everything," Zack repeated.

"Even if it means falling to the Dark Side?" Cody finally said it.

"Yes," Zack said quietly after a moment's hesitation.

Cody was aghast. "You didn't just say that."

"I did. It's just like Chelko said earlier," Zack told him. "The codes to those frigates are more important than his life. Defeating the Empire is more important than my life. There is no black and white right now, Cody. Everything is grey and will be until one side or the other wins."

"It's not that easy for us," Cody replied. "We can't just hang the Dark Side up in a closet when the war is over, Zack. Once a Jedi falls, they rarely come back."

"I'm not going to fall, Cody. I know what I'm doing."

"Zack," Cody pleaded, "neither of us know what we're doing. If this was ten years ago we would still be floating rocks and fighting with sticks while hoping that we'd be chosen as a padawan by a Jedi Master some day."

"Times have changed, Cody. The Council is gone. There are no more Masters. We might even be the last of the Jedi for all we know."

"No, there are others. There have to be."

"Maybe, but until we find one and can ask him for advice, we have to do the best we can with what we've been taught."

Cody knew that he'd run into a wall with Zack. He knew he was right but didn't know how to make Zack see it. "Promise me that once this mission is over and we're back on the _Event Horizon _that you'll sit down with me and let me help you figure everything out."

"Cody, I'm telling you that everything is going to be fine."

"Promise me, Zack. I can feel the anger in you. I've felt it for a while now. I'm worried."

"Fine," Zack said to appease his brother before changing the subject. "We're going to be coming out of hyperspace soon. You might want to strap in."

Harana was everything that Sleheyron wasn't. The majority of the landmasses were island chains with tall, young, mountainous spines slowly dropping down to expansive sandy beaches. Deeply blue water with turquoise shallows surrounded the archipelagos.

"Why couldn't we have come here first?" Zack mused as he put in a course for one of the larger resort islands.

"We probably couldn't afford to stay here for an hour," Cody replied as he scanned through the small of data he had retrieved from Chelko's com. "This place is for the galaxy's super rich."

"Good thing we're in the Hutt's ship or else they'd probably turn us away in a heartbeat." Zack flew low over a landing pad and set their borrowed vessel down in the assigned space. He unstrapped as soon as the landing struts were settled.

"Let's do this as quickly but quietly as we can," Cody warned as they walked to the rear ramp.

"Of course," Zack said, " I'm not going to walk in there with my lightsaber out and hack at the first stormtrooper I see if that's what you're worried about."

"I didn't say you were."

Zack turned to the droid. "MOS-B, let us know if Chelko's condition changes for the worst."

"I will, young sir."

The salty breeze hit them once they had debarked. Zack inhaled deeply and slipped a hand back through his hair. "Once the war is over, I'm finding a place like this and never leaving." Cody agreed and they started walking.

Even with their fancy diplomatic robes the boys were under dressed by the standards of the resort. Jewels as big as their fists hung from some necks and speeders that had to easily cross the million-credit mark drove past them left and right. Cody shook his head at all the opulence.

Their path took them past scenic points and low beaches before winding them back toward the center of the town. It wasn't large by some standards, but large enough. "Care to guess which building is probably the Imperial detention center?" Cody asked as they neared the stand of buildings.

"If I had to guess, I'd say the big, squat, ugly one with no windows."

"Exactly." Zack's description was perfectly accurate. While the rest of the surrounding buildings were made from a reddish sandstone and decorated to blend in with the island and all its trees, the Imperial building was an eyesore of grey duracrete. They purchased two cold drinks from a street vendor and took a seat on a bench a hundred meters or so away from their target.

"How are we going to do this?" Cody asked as they casually watched the building.

"There are cooling fans on the roof," Zack said, pointing. "That means there has to be an access hatch if they ever need to work on them."

"It's an Imperial building," Cody reminded him.

"I know, but on a world like this I guarantee they never planned on a break _in, _much less a break in by two Jedi."

"So we get to the roof and then?"

"We work our way down until we find what we're looking for. What's the agent's name again?"

"Tylan Shol."

"That's it. Middle aged near-human, red tinted skin?" Zack asked as he tried to remember their briefing.

"Correct," Cody told him.

"Are you ready?"

"It's the middle of the day!"

"We might not have time to wait until nightfall. If they have him and know who he is, chances are they're already interrogating him. If they have him but don't know, chances are that they're still already interrogating him." Cody couldn't argue with that.

"Okay, let's go," he said with a hint of misgivings.

They left their bench and started walking, taking care to make their journey to the building a roundabout trek. After almost fifteen minutes, the boys were in an alley behind the detention building. They looked up at the edge of the roof and then around themselves and found the coast was clear.

"Ten meters or so," Zack guessed. "Ready?"

"I think so." Both twins squatted down as they called on the Force and exploded upwards. Zack cleared the roof and landed on his feet but Cody only managed to catch the lip of the duracrete. He pulled himself up and swung a leg over before rolling onto the roof. "That was a little more than ten meters," Cody said as he picked himself up. Zack shrugged and led them to an access door.

They bypassed the lock on the door and cautiously swung it open a crack, just enough to peek in. Stairs led down and curved away from the small landing. They stepped inside and paused after closing the door behind them.

"I don't sense anyone near the steps," Cody said.

"Neither do I. Come on." They crept down and around the corner. "We need to find a computer so we can figure out where he is. Otherwise, we'll be in here all day," Zack whispered as they poked their heads around the last of the steps. They sneaked to the end of the corridor and saw a man in an officer's uniform sitting at computer terminal. "Ask and you shall receive."

Zack gestured with a hand and a stack of papers slid from the man's desk and scattered themselves on the floor. As the man swore with irritation and bent to pick them up, the boys were on him. Zack gave him a punch to the temple as he looked up and he rolled out of his chair in a heap.

"See what you can find," Zack said, "I'll go find a storage room or something to stash him in. We should be long gone by the time he wakes up." Cody nodded as Zack dragged the man's body away by the feet. He was deep in the building's mainframe by the time his brother returned but growing more frustrated by the second.

"Anything?"

"Yes and no. I can't find any mention of him by name or a list of recent detainees but I found a schematic of the detention level. Three stories underground, of course. If he's here, that's where he is."

"Naturally."

"If we had R-1 here we could probably find out what the temperature in his cell is," Cody said as he pushed the keyboard away. His illicit computer skills were light years behind those of a droid.

"But we don't so we'll have to make due with what we have." Zack bent down and looked into the screen with his brother as he scanned the display. "There's only one turbolift heading down to the underground levels," he said as he frowned. "That could be nasty." Zack highlighted an area and enlarged it.

"We could take one of the ventilation shafts down." Cody traced it with a thin finger.

"Yeah, but we won't be able to use it to get back up with Tylan if they've done anything to him."

"We'll just have to-" Cody said just before a klaxon went off.

"What did you do?" Zack asked immediately.

"Nothing as far as I know. I must have tripped something when I was searching through the database."

"Great. There went all the chances of doing this the easy way. Come on, we need to get busy because we won't get another shot at this." Zack walked purposefully away from the desk and Cody quickly fell in beside him. They passed the stairs and went to the turbolift, determined to get to the lower levels as quickly as possible. Cody pressed the button repeatedly but nothing happened.

"Locked out." He pulled his blue saber from within his robes and quickly cut a hole through the door. He pulled the severed panel back before glancing through the hole and saw that the car was on the ground floor. Blade still ignited, he hopped through the opening and dropped down to the roof of the car. He landed on one knee and cut another hole through the roof. Zack followed and the twins took a moment before leaving the relative safety of the turbolift car.

"They're waiting for us. Ready?" Zack asked as he pulled his lightsaber out and added a green glow to the walls.

"Yes," Cody said and pulled out the bone-handled yellow lightsaber he'd picked up on Dathomir. "Lift to the sub-levels are at the other end of this floor," he said over the _snap-hiss _as the second blade ignited. Zack threw his hand out and the turbolift's door exploded outwards. Zack caught a quick glimpse of a sea of white and black as the door tumbled into a group that had the misfortune of taking a firing position directly in front of the lift. They were instantly smashed flat and the twins dashed from the car, Cody to the left and Zack to the right.

Cody jumped and cleaved a stormtrooper and the desk behind him. Without losing any momentum, he spun and brought one saber up in a sweeping arc and reflected nearly a dozen blaster bolts back at the soldiers who had fired them. Deep holes appeared in the center of their chest armor and face masks before they dropped to the polished floor.

He jumped over another volley of bolts and sent a heavy plotting table skidding into the troopers, crushing them against and then through the wall. Cody then ducked under a line of fire from a hastily deployed heavy weapon. Shards of stone blew off the wall and rained down on him as the bolts ricocheted. He took two steps and jumped on the wall in front of the green bolts, pushing off again into a back flip. The gunner wasn't fast enough to track him and the wall around him soon looked like the surface of an airless moon. Cody landed and threw the yellow saber. It spun across the room in a deadly arc and sliced through the repeating blaster and the unfortunate stormtrooper manning it.

He held his hand out and the lightsaber flew back into his hand as he whirled around and dismembered another small knot of four in less than a second. Cody reached out with the Force and pulled the lighting and tiles and blocks of duracrete from the ceiling and buried another group under tons of rubble. He then spared a glance to see how Zack was fairing.

Zack felt the rush of battle overtake him as they covered the distance to the far wall. He could feel each stormtrooper's mind as they decided to pull the trigger and the resulting bolts came at him in slow motion. He easily parried three wild shots before pulling a large monitor from the wall and crushing another small squad of stormtroopers.

Before the sparks stopped hissing he was on the move again. Zack took a small step and hit two stormtroopers with a crescent kick and sent them flying backwards. He was on them before they could raise their gun barrels again. One took a knee to the head and was thrown through a doorway and crumpled against the wall while his compatriots were struck low by an immediate backwards slash. Zack bisected two more stormtroopers and joined his brother at the turbolift. Cody spared a look back over his shoulder and saw no movement. He punched the access button and the doors surprisingly slid open. "Such a waste." Cody shook his head sadly.

"They made their choice," Zack replied. They stepped inside the lift and the doors began to close quietly. The remains of a light fixture fell from the ceiling in a shower of sparks just as the doors slid shut.

After a quick drop through the building's sub-levels, the car came to a stop and the door opened. Cody hadn't sensed any hostile presences as they had descended and there were no surprises waiting for them as they stepped out into the hallway. Pained screamed echoed from a cell somewhere within the level and the twins picked up their pace. Cody glanced side to side into the small viewing windows as they passed but saw nothing but empty rooms.

"I don't like this," he said softly as they passed the halfway point of the corridor.

"Do you feel something?"

"Nothing like that. I just feel all the old pain that's gone on down here."

"We'll be out of here soon," Zack answered as the sounds of screaming got louder. They picked up their pace until they were at a fast jog.

"You will tell us why you are here," they heard, quickly answered by another wail. "Shock him again."

They reached the cell and a quick look showed a man shackled to a table with two grey-clad officers standing close by. A matte black droid, bristling with many pointed and sharp appendages, floated over the man. A pronged rod extended and touched the man and his body shook as the electricity ran through him.

Zack's eyes widened as he watched. He felt the dark flame deep that had been simmering in his belly surge and his brow furrowed. He reached a hand out and the interrogation droid smashed into the nearest wall. The two surprised officers whirled around and Zack yanked his hand back, pulling them both against the door with crushing force.

Cody was momentarily stunned by Zack's sudden actions but the sight of the capillaries in one officer's eye rupturing and the feeling of darkness emanating from his brother shattered his inaction. "That's enough!" he yelled and pushed his brother. Zack fell on his back and his hold was broken. The men slumped to the floor with limbs extended at awkward angles. He gave Zack a withering stare before cutting the door open. He threw the remnants aside and stepped over the bodies before stashing his lightsabers inside his robes.

"Tylan Shol? We're here to get you out," he said as he released the man's bonds.

"Who are you?" the weakened man muttered as he tried to sit up.

"Don't worry about it right now. Do you still have the codes?"

"No," he whispered and Cody's hopes fell. "I stashed them just before they picked me up."

"Good, that's good. Once the drugs wear off you can help us find it again."

The man mumbled something unintelligible and passed out in Cody's arms. He looked back and saw Zack peeking in the room. He hoisted the man over his shoulder and walked out before he could a word.

"Cody, I..."

"Not now," Cody said stiffly. "Just make sure we don't walk into a trap while I carry him out of here."

"I didn't even know I was doing it," Zack offered again.

"I said not now." Cody called on the Force to take a bit of the man's weight off his shoulders and started walking back to the turbolift. Zack joined him, wanting to explain but not knowing how.

As the car traveled back up, Cody closed his eyes and sensed the floors above them. Nothing. Could that have been all of the Empire's troops on the whole island? No, surely not, he thought. They're somewhere, just not here. The lift reached the ground floor and they stepped out into the same eerie silence they had left moments earlier. He readjusted the man's body and headed for the front door.

Carrying a bedraggled man through the middle of a wealthy city was something that would soon cause alarm, Cody knew so he set him down long enough to take his robe off and wrap it around as much of the near-human as he could. It didn't cover everything but covered enough. If anyone asked, his story was that his uncle had had too much to drink. "Let's go," he ordered to the unusually quiet Zack.

They walked the streets and caught their fair share of strange looks but no one seemed interested enough to make a comment or raise an alarm. "We need somewhere to hide out until he works the drugs out of his system," Cody said softly.

Zack scanned the street and saw a maintenance droid pushing a hovercart leaving a beachfront residence. He extended his senses and found the dwelling empty. "There. With the droid coming out of it," he said and pointed.

"That will work." They strolled over and walked around to the beach side of the building. Zack quickly popped the lock with a Force nudge to the mechanism and they let themselves in. Cody laid Tylan's body on the nearest couch and began a quick search of the house. Once he was certain they were alone, he returned to the room. He instantly saw how sullen and morose Zack had become since they left the detention building.

"You were right," he said as Cody sat nearby. "I thought I had control over it but I didn't." Cody went to interrupt but Zack waved him quiet. "I saw what they were doing to him and something in me just snapped. It was like I was watching myself from outside my body." Zack put his head down and shook it slowly.

"We'll get through this. Once we recover the data we need, you and I will work together to-"

"How?"

"I don't know, Zack. We'll figure it out."

"It felt like I was burning on the inside," Zack said after a moment. "Like I'd eaten a hot coal and it was spreading through my body. If you hadn't stopped me when you did I might have pulled them through the door piece by piece. Did I kill them?" he asked, his eyes still trained on the floor.

"I...don't know," Cody answered.

"I did. I can always tell when you're lying." He reached into his robes and pulled out his lightsaber and held it out to Cody. "Take this. I don't deserve it."

Cody hesitated before accepting it but finally did and hung it from his belt with his own. He soon felt Zack drop into a deep, meditative trance. He sighed and cast his gaze over the unconscious Tylan.

Hours passed and the sun began to set. Cody began to worry that they might have guests arrive before the man stirred. Zack had come out of his trance and looked better but Cody knew he was still raw inside. He offered him the lightsaber but Zack declined.

"Not yet."

Tylan came to as the sun touched the horizon. "Where am I?" he asked.

"With friends," Cody told him as he offered a bottle of water he'd liberated from the kitchen.

"The code cube," Tylan said as he sat up.

"You said you hid it."

"I did. Just before the Imps tumbled me." The man looked around the room lucidly and sat up, looking worlds apart from a few hours earlier.

"Do you remember where?" Zack asked, hopeful.

"Yes, yes. I dropped it in a storm drain. I can find it, though," he added as he saw Zack's face fall. "I stuck a little homing beacon to it before I ditched it. If either of you have a com, we can find it with no problem." Zack pulled one from a pocket and handed the small device over. Tylan entered a short code and a small blue light began glowing on its surface.

"Are you strong enough to walk?" Cody asked as the man wobbled when he stood.

"I will be."

Tylan's gait became steadier as they left the house and made their way down the street. He led the way with the twins close behind, Zack scanning their surroundings for any signs of trouble and Cody near enough to grab him in case he lost his balance. Cody also kept watch over Zack, both with his eyes and through a surreptitious use of the Force. His brother seemed to have regained his center after the events in the detention block basement. He was calm but Cody could sense much distress still buried below the surface.

"I dropped it in here," Tylan said as he pointed to a grate on the side of the road. He squatted down and peered inside. "Have a light?" Cody pulled a small glow rod from his belt and handed it over. "It must have been washed further down the line," Tylan said as he stood back up.

"You're positive the Imperials didn't get it?" Zack asked.

"Positive. Look at the grate. It hasn't been moved any time recently." The twins looked down and couldn't deny that he was right. "Time's wasting," he muttered as he bent down again and lifted the grate. Once he pulled it aside, he let the twins go down first and followed, replacing the grate.

"Well, on the bright side, this isn't quite as gross as I thought it would be," Zack quipped as they trailed Tylan and his improvised tracking device. He stepped over a pile of something that might have been furry.

"This is the side of Harana that no tourist ever expects to see," Cody agreed. With each word his brother spoke Cody was feeling more and more of his old brother coming back and was glad. He'd worry about the future later.

"How long is this tunnel?" Zack wondered after they'd spent nearly ten minutes sloshing their way through runoff.

"No idea, but it can't be much further since I can hear the ocean in the distance." Zack focused his senses and found the man to be right again.

Twin moons hanging high in the sky greeted the small group when they reached the end of the tunnel. The water around their ankles cascaded off the end of the duracrete and fell nearly twenty meters to the small inlet below.

"It's got to be just down there since the com is saying we're right on top of it," Tylan said as he shone the light around. Most of the light was diffused away but a small part reached the sandy bottom and bounced off a handful of objects. "We need to find some underwater gear," the man continued.

"I'll get it," Cody told him as he took off his shirt and belt. Tylan's eyes widened at the sight of three lightsabers hanging less than a meter away from his face.

"What are you, some kind of Jedi or something?"

"Yes, actually," he said as he handed his belongings to Zack and dove into the water. The two at the tunnel's edge watched as he swam to the bottom and dug around. One minute passed. Two. Finally, Cody's fist closed around the cube and he pushed off and swam back to the surface. After a deep breath he pitched the cube up to his brother and started climbing up the sandy soil.

"That's it, right?" he asked as he pulled himself back into the tunnel.

"It is," Tylan replied as he handed it to Zack who made it disappear into an interior pocket.

Cody shook his head and partially dried off with his shirt before putting over a shoulder and taking his belt back. "Good. Let's get out of here. The Alliance needs this cube."

Thirty minutes later found them walking up the road to the spaceport. The moons were high overhead but there was enough light coming from the spaceport to illuminate everything around them. They'd passed the ship closest to the edge of the tarmac when Zack put his hands out and stopped them.

"Something's not right," he said as his eyes darted left and right.

"I don't feel anything," Cody said warily as he looked around.

"There's _nothing_ to feel here. It's all a big void in the Force."

"Just like on-"

"Exactly," Zack said, finishing the statement with a single word. He reached out and felt the bubble in the Force, searching for its center. His actions were rendered moot seconds later.

"The Force told me I'd meet you again, young Jedi," a voice very familiar to the twins exclaimed. A tall figure in dark robes stepped out from behind a star ship, flanked by three others in similar garb. The Force void suddenly dissipated and the twins were hit by a wave of Dark Side energy.

"You," Zack snarled.

"Yes. Now I shall finish what I started." A red blade appeared in the being's hand and it was joined by three more as the others stepped in line.

"Tylan, find somewhere to hide. Things are about to get ugly," Cody said.

"Take this and find a way back to the Alliance if we don't make it," Zack told him as he put the cube in the man's hand. He then ripped his robes off and easily caught the lightsaber Cody flipped to him.

"Remember, control, Zack. Control." Cody warned as their blades flared to life.

"I know," he replied in a startlingly calm voice. The two groups approached each other slowly, each trying to feel the other out before the inevitable clash. The sluggish pace abruptly turned into a dash as the two sides joined in a shower of sparks.

Cody spun and ducked and swiped at the two that had chosen him for their target. He feinted backing up a step before lashing out with a vicious kick to an unguarded knee. He heard something snap but didn't have to dwell on it as he had to deflect a half dozen incoming strikes. He struck back before sidestepping another flurry of blows.

Zack was having a much easier time of it as the Inquisitor hung back while his underling advanced, leaving him fighting one on one. The Darksider was good, Zack quickly realized, but he was better. The Force flowed freely through him and he felt like he was standing in the serene center of a storm's eye. He parried all the acolyte's attacks with minimal effort before going on the offensive.

Downward strike. Back fist. Kick to the solar plexus. Two sweeping strikes from each side. Each was dodged or deflected but the man was backpedaling. Zack could feel the man's fear, his hatred. Zack's pace picked up, his mind no longer in conscious control of his body.

Cody split one of his attackers in two and spared a split second to check on his brother and was surprised. It was as if Zack had suddenly applied every lesson he'd seemingly ignored over the years at once. He was fighting purely within the light side. Cody returned his attention to his remaining foe and never saw the attack that felled him coming.

A bolt of purple lightning raced from the Inquisitor's fingers and caught him squarely in the back. He was thrown forward into the landing strut of a blue-hued vessel and collapsed.

"Cody!" Zack screamed. "Cody!"

"Just like before," the Inquisitor laughed. "How easy you Jedi fall."

Zack felt the calmness within him evaporate and be replaced by anger of his own. He saw Cody's remaining attacker prepare for the killing blow and grabbed him within a massive, invisible fist. "No!" he screamed again. "You won't!" The man's arms were crushed to his sides and Zack picked him up from the ground as if he were a crumb. "You won't!" Zack swore as he flung the man high into the night sky. Not caring where he landed, Zack turned his attention to the man he'd been fighting with seconds before.

"That's it," the underling taunted and held his lightsaber in a defensive position. Zack bellowed in rage and launched himself at the man. Attacks came from every angle and the red blade couldn't keep up. Very soon the man's head rolled across the pitted tarmac. Zack kicked it away as he turned to the Inquisitor.

"You still want to finish what you started?" he asked as he approached.

"I've killed your Master and your brother will last but a few seconds longer than you. You will make three." They met in a clash of blades in the center of the spaceport.

Zack felt his throat being constricted and threw the Dark Side attack aside with ease. He sensed the Inquisitor's shock and launched another round of attacks. The fire inside him grew and expanded until it consumed him. He shoved the Inquisitor away with the Force and smiled as the man struggled to stop his backward motion.

"You should have made sure I was dead the first time. That was a terrible mistake," Zack said in a flat voice as he approached. "You aren't going to get to make another." He clinched his free hand into a fist so tight his nails dug into his palm and drew blood.

"You foolish child. Allow me to show you the error of your ways." Another blast of lightning surged out and Zack laughed as he caught it on his blade.

"No," he said as his own hatred boiled over. "Allow me." He opened his bloodied fist and a jagged fork of lightning lashed out. Zack felt exhilaration as he watched it strike the Inquisitor and grinned as the man contorted on the ground. Zack slowly walked over to the twitching body, enjoying the sights and sounds of his pain. His released the man from his electric grasp and stood over him. Zack slowly shook his head. "Should have killed me when you had the chance," he said softly as he crushed the man's throat with his boot.

He turned away from the scene of his slaughter and saw Tylan crouching over his brother's body. Tylan saw him coming and stepped away with his hands up.

"Is he...?"

"No, he's alive but he's hurt," Tylan replied, still backing away. Something in the boy had drastically changed, he noticed almost instantly. Instead of the fresh-faced youth he had been moments earlier, now he looked older and menacing.

Cody rolled from his side to his back and Zack heard a raspy, croaking moan. He looked down to see Cody's eyes squinting open from a bloodied face. His eyes studied Zack for a moment before he spoke.

"Zack? What did you do?" Cody managed to cry out before his eyelids fluttered and he fell back into unconsciousness.

The anger and passion instantly drained from his body upon hearing his brother's voice and was replaced with bottomless sorrow and festering despair. "What did I do?" he asked himself but found no answer. He turned to Tylan. "Take our ship and get him back to the Alliance frigate," he told the man as he pointed out their vessel.

"Where are you going?" Tylan asked as Zack started walking away.

"I don't know," was all he could reply. "Somewhere. For a while."

Tylan scooped up Cody's prone form after gingerly picking up and deactivating his lightsabers. He traveled the short distance to the Hutt's star ship as quickly as he could and dashed up the ramp.

_And so ends part one. _

_I think I found the secret to writing this story: writing other things. I messed around with some of the 'other scenes' from Halflife as well as a few other smaller stories I've been slowly writing for a while now and this one jumped up and told me it was its turn. I think this took a total of maybe six hours over three days compared to nearly a month for the last chapter. So wish me luck as I "don't" write the next Star Wars chapter._


	9. Chapter 9

_Zack, approximately two weeks after the battle on Harana_

"Excuse me, young human, but those fine gentlebeings over there," the bartender said with a barely hidden snicker in his voice as he pointed across the bar to two tables pulled together and packed with rough individuals, "would like me to tell you that they don't like younglings in their cantina." Zack looked over and saw that the group was waving menacingly at him. He'd been expecting something like this.

"Okay," Zack said without much interest. He took another sip from his sickly-sweet drink and waved back.

"They also would like me to tell you that if you don't leave they will forcefully remove your face from the rest of your skull." The bartender looked incredibly pleased with himself for remembering all his lines without prompting. He stood back with his fingers intertwined while he waited for Zack to get up.

"Tell them I said _make me_."

"What?" the bartender was incredulous.

"Tell them," Zack said, speaking slowly and clearly enunciating each syllable, "I said to make me."

Zack had spent nearly two weeks after his experience with the Dark Side traveling the space lanes alone as sadness and anger rolled over him like waves. The memories of how he'd come into possession of the grungy freighter he was piloting were hazy at best. Its shabbiness made him sure that he'd picked it up somewhere after he left Harana. He didn't dwell on it. He needed it more than the previous owner. All he could remember about leaving the resort world was massive amounts of grief and rage.

No, if he were to be honest with himself, he remembered a third thing: Power. He could still feel it in his mind, waiting, coiled like a sandpanther and waiting to be called on again. Begging to be called on again. All but _demanding _to be called on again. He took a deep breath and blew it out slowly. He could control it. He hated himself for it but it was becoming easier with each passing day.

Hate. The only thing he hated more than himself was the Empire and he had settled on this backwater planet after that hatred had resurfaced. The Imperials were destroying lives and worlds under Palpatine's aegis and the idea of bouncing from planet to planet doing nothing burned at him. He was doing no good for anyone. He was useless. He needed to find a way to get back into the fight, be it with the Rebels or on his own, and there was no better place to do it than a slag heap of a world like Tandarkin.

It was dirty and polluted but it was nearly as far as he could get from the Core without drifting into the outer wisps of the galaxy. He'd passed through a thick layer of hazy smog when he landed and the ship's readings recommended a breath mask. He discarded that piece of advice since he hadn't come here for health reasons. He was here to find a particular sort of rough individuals that had no love for the Empire.

He looked over at the other tables as the bartender approached and relayed his message to the cutthroats. Lips curled up, hands turned to fists. Zack could feel the anger roiling like a dark cloud above them and he shook his head. They were little more than savages. He watched as they jumped to their feet and walked menacingly toward his table, taking note of the bloody fist they all wore on a sleeve. Pirates. This far from Coruscant's long reach he wasn't surprised.

A lupine Togorian, all muzzle, fur, claws, and sharp teeth, stood over his chair and glared down at him. "Your little mouth signed your death warrant, runt," he spat.

"You really don't want to do this," Zack said calmly and with a discrete wave of his hand.

"No, I really think I do," the Togorian said as he backhanded Zack out of the chair and across the bar. He crashed into the wall and left a crater in the cheap plaster as he fell to the floor. His ears rang and it seemed forever before he could force air back into his lungs after the impact.

Zack pushed himself to his knees and wiped blood from the corner of his mouth and nose. His momentary surprise of the pirate ignoring his Force suggestion was burned away as his eyes narrowed. He spat red. The pain he felt and his embarrassment disappeared as he got to his feet and stared down the Togorian. "Okay, we'll do it your way," Zack snarled. His muscled tensed as he felt the dark power flowing through his body. A fleeting thought told him that this was wrong, that there was another way, but the anger devoured that small voice in an instant.

The Togorian was on him in a flash but Zack was even faster. An elbow to the creature's solar plexus flowed smoothly into a jumping uppercut into a roundhouse kick. Zack stood still as the pirate stumbled backwards to gather his wits. Buoyed by his mates, the Togorian quickly closed on Zack again. Zack dodged out of the way of the clawed strike almost as soon as the pirate decided to throw it, easily catching his wrist and swiftly dislocating the massive elbow with the palm of his hand. Zack followed that up with a shot to the groin and side kick to the knee that sent the Togorian sprawling onto the filthy bar floor clutching his leg in agony. Zack smiled and adjusted the hood on his head.

Four seconds had elapsed and the bar was in a stunned silence. Zack surveyed the remaining pirates and waited. Their paralysis was bound to break. Looks were exchanged between the pirates and the brawl was on. Zack was like a whirlwind, landing compact but powerful strikes and dancing invisibly out of the way of any attacks. Almost as soon as it started, the fight was over. Zack stood over the pile of moaning bodies and looked down on them with disdain.

"You fight like animals with no thought to your actions. It's a wonder the Imperials haven't hunted you down yet and put you out of your misery."

"Do it yourself, human," one of the pirates said, flashing a universally obscene gesture as he raised his head to glare at Zack.

"Fine," Zack agreed but reconsidered it as his hand began to slip beneath his robes. "No. I can use you," he said, a plan forming in his mind. "Follow me and I will spare your lives."

"Why would we follow you?" Another pirate asked. Those pirates that could began to stand and helped those who couldn't. Zack didn't think that the pirates had another round in them but he wasn't positive so he stayed on guard.

"Beside the fact that I just laid you all out?" Zack looked up into the faces of the beings before him and let the mockery in his voice show through.

"You were lucky, human pup, that is all. It won't happen again," the Togorian said. "Now tell us why we would ever follow a runt like you." Despite being beaten and bloodied and broken, the fight hadn't gone out of the pirates after all, Zack noticed. Good.

"It will happen again and again until you cover the floor with your blood," Zack said sternly. "Trust me on that." He eyed the group and felt for any hostile thoughts but found only simmering resentment and uncertainty. "You will follow me because I am Jedi," Zack said as he threw his hood back, using the Force to add weight to his words. He pulled out his lightsaber but did not ignite it.

Mumbled surprise and a lone barking laugh greeted his announcement. "Jedi," one of the voices snickered. "Jedi are extinct, young human. Tell us another one," the Togorian laughed. Zack glared at him and to the surprise of his fellow pirates, he was violently snatched from his feet and suspended upside down in midair.

"What is your name?" he asked the Togorian.

"K..Karaz."

Zack's blade flared to life and was a centimeter from the center of his furry forehead. Karaz's eyes widened and he focused on not moving a muscle. "Do you believe me now, Karaz?" the scent of singed fur filled the cantina.

"Yes, yes, Master Jedi." Zack did not correct him.

"Will you follow me, Karaz?"

"Yes, of course!" The others quickly joined in agreement. Zack briefly considered ending Karaz's life as a show of force but decided it to be unnecessary. He could make a good second in command.

Zack deactivated his lightsaber and hung it back on his belt before lowering the pirate to the floor. He looked over the remainder of the pirates and quickly probed their minds as well as he could. There was no dissension or falsehoods that he could detect. Smart. They knew they had been bested and joined the winning team.

The rest of the bar's patrons suddenly either found their drinks fascinating or made for the exits as Zack completed his inspection. He scoffed at them but returned his attention to the pirates.

"What do you call yourselves?" he asked.

"The Bloodfists, Master Jedi," Karaz said quickly. He slung an arm over a fellow pirate to take the weight off his injured knee.

"How many vessels do you have?"

"One, Master Jedi." Zack remained silent and he continued. "A YT-2000, heavily modded."

The pirates could tell by the look on their new leader's face that he was less than pleased. "That will do for a start. Get to your ship and meet me in orbit. We have much to discuss. If you try to flee I will hunt you down to the last." Zack pointed to the door and they were on their way. "Have your intel officer, if you even have one, prepare whatever information you have on Imperial activities in this sector," he called after them.

"The Imperials, Master Jedi?" Karaz asked questioningly.

"Is that a problem?"

"No, no. It will be ready for you." The Togorian bowed his head and hobbled away as quickly as he could.

Slightly less than one standard hour later, he had docked with the pirates' ship and Zack was standing before the small assembly of pirates. They completely filled the ship's common area as he was given report after report of their capabilities and what intelligence they had of the sector.

"The _Scourge _has two fire-linked double blasters in the chin and two more pair in turrets top and bottom," a weatherbeaten Duro told him. "She also has an ion cannon in a hull recess but it is temperamental at best."

"Can it be fixed?" Zack asked.

"Yes, if we had the parts."

"We'll get the parts," Zack said coldly. "That will not be a problem. Continue."

The Duro did and looked like he was about to collapse from nervousness by the time he was finished with his review of the _Scourge_'s offensive weapons. The reports from the rest of the crew were just as short and anxiety-filled as the weapon officer's. Zack dismissed them under orders to bring the ship to full operation as quickly as possible before shaking his head privately after they scurried away. _They are amateurs. Playing at being pirates, _he said to himself. _This is going to be harder than I thought. _

It was harder than Zack had ever imagined but in a standard month he had turned a single ship of petty thieves into a brutally efficient band of pirates. They had hit Imperial outposts across the sector and augmented themselves with stolen equipment and ships, and most importantly, more crew. Those that chose to desert the Imperials were spared and taken aboard with open arms. Those that didn't received no such considerations. Other, smaller, pirate and mercenary groups were recruited to his cause and at last Zack had his weapon to turn against the Empire.

Zack sat on the bridge of his newly christened flagship, formerly an Imperial cruiser but now called the _Scarlet Void_, as he prepared to spring his trap. They were stationed at the junction of two large hyperspace lanes and awaiting the arrival of a scheduled Imperial convoy. His ships hung in the darkness of space, every pirate on edge as the moment of battle approached.

"Imperials should be exiting hyperspace in ten seconds, Master Jedi," one of the pirates informed him. "Five seconds. The carrier is ready to launch and all ships report guns hot."

"Good," Zack replied curtly. He knew all that he had been told. He could feel the tension of the starfighter pilots in the carrier a few kilometers away. He could feel the desire of the gunners to pound the Imperial vessels the moment they reverted to realspace. Zack smiled.

"Imperial vessels reverting," the pirate announced. "Standard formation."

"Launch the starfighters, all guns free," Zack ordered as he clasped his hands behind his back and watched the attack unfold.

A large cargo hauler began to disgorge dozens of red-tipped starfighters. The mixture of older Z-95s and Uglies, with a sprinkling of newer X-wings thrown in began to swarm around the Imperials. As they picked away at the convoy, Zack marveled yet again that the Imperials had still not realized the need to protect the vulnerable freighters with starfighters. _They will learn but until they do their foolishness is my gain, _he said as he glanced at a display to his left.

The starfighters attacked unimpeded and he watched as blossoms of fire began to erupt along the hull of one of the escorts. Its guns fired back ineffectually and sporadically as the ship began to die. A stabilizer had been destroyed and the ship began listing before falling out of line. The fighters jumped on the escort again and a massive breach appeared in the hull. Flames and bodies began to vent into the frigid depths of space. Zack turned his attention away after a massive explosion consumed the vessel.

The bigger guns of his small but potent fleet began blasting away, trading shots with the remaining Imperials. Caught by surprise and momentarily disoriented after leaving hyperspace, the convoy had little chance. Zack's guns systematically picked the Imperials apart, walking their combined fire across a single ship until its shields buckled before turning their fire to the next.

"Prepare the boarding parties," Zack ordered as the battle began to wind down. Small shuttles launched from another freighter and sped across the distance.

"Shuttles one, two, four, and five report boarding tubes extended and are cutting their way into their assigned ships. Boarding parties estimated to be inbound in less than a minute."

"They are slow," Zack said, not hiding the displeasure in his voice over his remaining two shuttles' poor performance. The pirates near him flinched but were glad that Zack's ire was not directed at them. He didn't move until readouts of the convoy's cargo began scrolling across his screen.

"Damage report on the third corvette, Master Jedi. Chances are we can salvage it."

Zack hit a button on his display and it changed to a schematic of the damaged vessel. "If they can get it operational in an hour we'll take it and scuttle it if they can't."

"Yes, Master Jedi."

Zack turned his gaze back out into space and watched a body float past. His old training told him that he should feel bad for causing the being's death but he didn't care. "They made their choice," he said quietly and looked past the body.

_Cody, less than a week after the battle on Harana_

The needle-nosed heavy starfighter came to a rest on the surface of the frozen moon that lazily orbited the Rebel's supposedly secret base. Its pilot shut down all systems but basic life support and settled back into the seat to wait. She glanced at the chrono and nodded. Soon. She could faintly feel her target on the nearby planet and pulled the Force around herself like a cloak and disappeared into it.

"This is Hoth all over again!" Cody yelled as he dashed down a hallway.

"No, this is worse. I've warned High Command for months after that debacle that this would happen but they kept building it up and bringing more supplies in," the major said as he tried to keep up with the young Jedi. A worn astromech droid sped along jerkily behind the two of them, its dome spinning erratically as it followed them.

They called the base 'The Egg' but its official designation was EG-33419. It was a mined out husk of a planet that rested nearly one hundred lightyears above the galactic plane. Its distance and obscurity prompted the Rebels to use it as a massive storehouse for supplies and a rehab facility for its wounded soldiers. At any one time there were thousands of personnel roaming the massive main cave performing maintenance where required and preparing tons of equipment for shipment across the galaxy. At the moment, every last one of them were loading wounded Rebels and supplies into any and all ships as fast as they could.

"I guess we'll have to finish that briefing later," Cody yelled over the blaring Klaxons and the major only nodded, not having the wind to answer in the middle of their sprint. They soon came to the command room and burst through the door. R-1 chased after them and skidded into the wall beside the door before backing up and entering the room with an irritated deedle.

"Report," the major ordered as he skidded to a halt next to a large screen. He sucked a deep breath as his eyes scanned over relayed images from sensors at the edge of the system.

"A large Imperial fleet has jumped in-system and they are closing fast. Three, possibly four, Star Destroyers and an assortment of smaller craft. Sensors indicate a high probability of ground forces."

"Wonderful. How long do we have?"

"We estimate nine minutes." The major swore deeply.

"Can we get everyone evacuated from here in that long?" Cody asked as he watched the first dagger-shaped Star Destroyer appear in a monitor.

"We'll have to. I'm not leaving a anyone behind. We're going to lose a lot of supplies but we'll get our troops out." He turned to the operator, "arm the charges. If we can't have it, neither can they." The operator nodded and entered a code into the computer while the major issued a flurry of orders to the rest of the staff.

"Can you fly?" the major asked, turning his attention to Cody for a moment.

"Yes, actually."

"Have you healed enough to fly?" he asked, sharpening the question a bit. "I'm talking starfighter, not freighter."

"I am," Cody told the man. "The medics cleared me shortly before you arrived." The man gave him a long, hard look. He'd seen Cody when he arrived on the medical evacuation flight from the _Event Horizon _and couldn't understand how the youth was even alive. Now the boy had been cleared to return to duty not even a week later? He shook his head.

"We have enough freighter jocks to get the wounded and vital supplies out of here but we are desperately low on pilots qualified on the fast movers. I have nearly four wings of rehabbed X-wings sitting out there and they're worth more than just about anything here."

"I can fly one."

"I figured you'd say that. Take your weird little droid and-" R-1 blatted and blared and flashed his lights. "Take your droid," he said, looking at R-1, "and get to the flight line."

Cody nodded and they shook hands. "Good luck, Major. May the Force be with you."

"And with you. We'll transmit rendezvous coordinates later. For now just get out of here."

"Come on, R-1," Cody said as he started for the door. The droid fell into place behind him and scurried after the boy. They entered the maelstrom of bodies moving in all directions and it seemed to take years to reach the group of X-wings. Technicians were hurriedly doing last minute checks and disconnecting auxiliary power cables.

"You one of my new pilots?" a gruff Rodian asked as Cody came to a halt in front of him.

"I am." The Rodian looked him over for a few long seconds before pointing to an awaiting fighter.

"Suit is in the cockpit. Go." Cody was abruptly dismissed as the Rodian turned to yell at another being. He dashed to the X-wing and started taking his robes off while he ran. They flung wildly behind him when he reached the ladder to the cockpit and he dumped them in the seat as he pulled out the orange space suit.

"Little young to be flying aren't you, human?" a furry alien asked as it helped him into the suit.

"I'm probably a little young to do everything I've done recently," he replied as he slid his arms into the sleeves.

"Too true," the alien squeaked sadly. He locked the helmet over Cody's head and did a quick pressure check on the suit. "Everything is in the green. Let me get a maglift for your droid and we'll get you out of here."

"I can do it." Cody grabbed R-1 in the Force and lifted the droid up and over the closed wings and toward the socket behind the cockpit. He saw the alien's look of shock but ignored it while he concentrated. He gently settled R-1 in the socket and received a tweetle from the droid. He was locked in place. Cody patted the bewildered tech on the shoulder and sprung up the ladder.

He strapped himself in and looked over the controls. Everything looked similar to what he'd seen dozens of time before. "I can do this," he said to himself as he punched the master power switch. The X-wing shuddered to life and began to float a few meters above the floor when he kicked on the repulsor coils.

Cody waited while the ship went through a self diagnostic. Data feeds from the base flashed across his small screen, giving updates and evacuation routes. _Do not engage Imperial forces _remained stationary atop the data flood. "I don't plan on it," Cody said as he hit a button to seal the cockpit. The ladder was rolled away and Cody eased the throttle forward. The X-wing slipped past other fighters as he followed a tunnel to the surface.

Cody goosed the power a bit more as he hit open air and then fully opened the engines once he was away from the base. He pointed the starfighter's nose skyward and a giant hand pushed him back into his seat despite the inertial dampeners. He'd never experienced _anything _like this in his years of piloting old freighters and other junk ships. He screamed through the atmosphere in a matter of seconds and then he blaster through into blackness of space. Cody extended his wings and activated the X-wing's shields.

It was a nightmare made real. Dozens upon dozens of ships darted every which way and red and green laser bolts were flashing all around him. A damaged TIE fighter spun out of control and Cody yanked the stick back to narrowly miss it. He maneuvered out of his unexpected loop and began a dash away from the battle. "R-1, I need a jump ready as soon as we get to the edge of the system." The droid replied and Cody scanned the text as it flew across his screen. "That'll do."

"There you are," the woman said as she felt her prey leaving the planet. She powered up her ship and leapt from the moon and into the fray. The X-wing was still out of visual range but it didn't matter. She could feel the young Jedi and a dark smile curled up the corner of her mouth. She increased her speed and the distance between them shrank quickly. A TIE fighter appeared between her and the Jedi and she obliterated the vessel before it could steal her target. She felt a momentary jolt of surprise from the Imperial fighter before the cool void of nothing replaced it.

She flew through the TIE's debris cloud, feeling no sorrow for ending the life of a supposed ally. Her crosshairs centered around the fleeing X-wing but she waited...waited...and finally pulled the trigger. Her four lasers winked to life and sent deadly bolts at the Jedi.

Cody felt a warning in the Force and immediately put the fighter on its side. He dodged the majority of the blasts but a half dozen peppered his shields and another found its way through and burned into the wing of his X-wing. He leveled the ship and looked back over his shoulder just as another barrage came his way. "R-1! How bad is it?" he asked the droid as he rolled inverted and made sure the throttles were all the way forward.

The droid told Cody what he wanted to know and it wasn't entirely good news. Cody frowned as the readout scrolled past. "Can we still jump to hyperspace?" the droid answered that they could but a long jump was out of the question. He jinked again as another salvo from the mystery ship scorched the space he was just in. "I don't care where we go but get me somewhere that is _not _here!" Cody yelled as he spun. The one shot that had penetrated the shields had damaged his control surfaces and it was getting harder and harder to keep the X-wing steady. He'd have to land and hope he could make repairs.

She could feel the panic from the starfighter ahead of her and it filled her with glee. The sights centered on her target and she pulled the trigger again only to see the shots miss. Frustration was quickly overwhelmed by the joy of a target that was worthy of her abilities. This wouldn't be a quick kill. She relished the challenge. "Escape if you can, young Jedi. I will follow you."

Cody managed to work out a combination of controls to get the X-wing back under full control. He blew out a deep breath and felt his mind clear. His eyes suddenly narrowed when he noticed a dark presence behind him. _Zack _was the first thought that flared across his mind but he quickly dismissed it. It felt nothing like his brother. At least nothing his brother _had _felt like. He put it out of his mind. If it was his brother...so be it. His eyes caught the distance remaining until he was clear of the planet's gravity.

"Almost there, R-1. Is the jump locked in? Okay, sorry, sorry," Cody said after the droid cheeped that it had already done its job. "Four, three, two, one...jump!" He pulled back on the lever and the stars elongated into lines.

"Computer," the huntress said, "give me the possible hyperspace exits based on the fighter's last vector." A list of planets filled her screen. "Classify by shortest distance," she ordered and the list reformatted. A prodding from the Force made her smile and she chose the first planet on the list. "I will find you," she said as she jumped after the Jedi.

"No, I don't think my piloting skills are terrible," Cody said to R-1 as they passed between the stars. "We were only hit once in case you didn't notice. Okay, seven, but only one got through." He shook his head when he realized he was arguing with a droid.

He never felt the attack coming until the very last second and that fact worried him. "I wasn't focused on what I was doing and it nearly cost us everything." Lessons he'd learned years ago flew through him. He saw Master Ishalka's face appear and fade away in his mind's eye and he felt ashamed.

By the time Cody came out of hyperspace near the planet of Narshe his X-wing was bucking against every movement he made. He was hundreds of lightyears away from where he intended to revert but he was alive and still in the fight. He headed for the lone bright spot below him and piloted his craft through the frigid atmosphere. He didn't like what the sensors told him about his destination but beggars couldn't be choosers. Cody came in slow and low over the dark and nearly frozen city.

He avoided the light flow of air traffic as he scanned the city for a spot to land. The city's spaceport would bring too many questions so he was looking for a secluded rooftop or something similar to set down on and try to effect repairs. Almost as if on cue, the X-wing shuddered and he had to divert full power to his port stabilizer to stop the craft from spinning. Cody gritted his teeth as he aimed for what looked like a high rise apartment building. "That will have to do," he said as he fought the ship every meter of the way.

Cody turned on the repulsors and did his best to land behind a large glowing sign. "Come on...come on, just a bit farther." He let out a sigh of relief when he felt the X-wing settle down on its landing struts. Cody was out of his helmet and on the roof almost as soon as the canopy was fully opened. He looked the hull over and frowned at the large black pit he saw. "Think you can fix it, R-1?" he asked as he lowered the droid to the ground with the Force and flinched at the high pitched whistle as R-1 examined the damage. Cody felt cold seeping through his boots and looked down to see himself standing in a puddle of melted snow. He took a few steps away from the warm X-wing and was back on frozen ground.

"It doesn't have to be perfect. It just has to get us back to the others." Cody listened to the droid's chatter and then opened the access panels that R-1 requested. He rubbed his hands together in the chilly wind before grabbing his robes from the back of the cockpit and sliding them over his flight suit. Hands deep in his pockets, he walked along the roofline while R-1 got down to business.

Cody looked down and saw nothing but white piled up around the building's base so many dozens of levels below. His breath fogged as he exhaled and he made a mental note to tell R-1 to avoid planets like this in the future. He stomped one boot to kick off the rime of snow and ice that had already stuck to it and was about to stomp the other when he felt the dark presence from earlier return. His eyes looked up into the dark sky, trying to make out any sort of threat.

There it was! Cody dove to the ground as a matte black ship swooped low overhead and missed him by centimeters. He spit out a mouthful of snow and picked himself up just in time to throw himself back down as the vessel skimmed over him again. Cody felt a feral grin in his mind and almost heard the laughter. "R-1! Do what you can to make it flyable and do it fast! I'm going to draw whoever that is away." The droid warbled a reply as he got to his feet and wiped the snow from his face and hair. He started running to the edge of the roof and with the aid of the Force, leapt across the gap between the building he was on and the next.

The roof he jumped to was a dozen stories lower and the height difference made it seem to Cody that he was hanging in the air forever before he finally landed. He scanned the skies and saw the ship looping slowly around. The cockpit opened and a figure jumped out before the ship landed near the edge of the roof. The cold wind billowed the being's robes during free fall and Cody noticed a definitely feminine form outlined by a skin-tight jump suit, its sleek lines marred only by a belt with a faint green light tied around her waist.

She landed on one knee and looked up with a menacing smile. Two large canine teeth glinted in the soft light. She stood and studied Cody and he felt unnerved. "So this is the whelp that Ishalka gave his life to defend? I can feel your fear, boy. What a poor choice on his part."

"How do you know that name?" Cody challenged, his hands unconsciously moving toward his belt as she took a step forward.

"I know that name because I slaved under him for nearly ten years and learned nothing," she said.

"Nayla?" Cody asked. "But Master Ishalka said you were killed when-"

"I wasn't but he never deigned to find out. For a long time I wished I had been but I changed my mind after the Emperor showed me everything that pathetic Wookiee never did."

"He corrupted you!"

"Call it what you wish, boy. I am stronger now than if I had spent a thousand years as his padawan."

"You dishonor his memory, Nayla," Cody told her. He could feel the certainty of battle rushing at him but tried to prevent it. "You can still turn away from the Dark Side. I can help you."

"Like you helped your brother Zack?" she shot back at him and laughed when see saw the reaction her words caused. "Oh yes, I know. I felt him fall. We all did."

"You don't deserve to say his name."

"Perhaps not but it doesn't matter. You will join him today."

"I will not."

"Then you will not live to see the first rays of daylight on this wretched planet. One way or another." She sprung and pulled a metal rod from behind her back while in mid-air. Cody heard a double _snap-hiss _and was stunned for a fraction of a second when a red blade appeared at each end. His delay almost cost him as she spun both blades through where he'd been standing just before he lunged away in a desperate back handspring.

Cody recovered and almost instantly had a lightsaber in each hand. The circled each other warily, Cody in a classic defensive stance and his attacker spinning her lightsaber with a flourish. Even with a premonition from the Force, she was on him almost before he could react. _She's so fast, _Cody thought as he blocked four strikes in under a second and felt a wave of confidence flow from her.

"You can't beat me," she taunted. "You are only delaying the inevitable."

"There is no emotion, there is peace," Cody said softly. "There is no ignorance, there is knowledge."

"That old mantra will not save you," Nayla scoffed as she recognized what Cody was saying. She launched another flurry of strikes and forced Cody to backpedal. He could feel her smugness and overconfidence through the Force.

Zack was the better swordsman between the two of them and Cody knew that even his brother would have a hard time handling her speed and skill but Cody had developed far subtler abilities in the Force and he knew it was with those that the duel would be won. He settled into another defensive pattern and he realized that he could use her sureness against her. Cody allowed himself to be pushed further backwards and made his efforts seem more desperate. His subterfuge nearly worked too well as a strike he didn't see coming lopped off nearly half of his trailing robes.

"Give in to it. There is so much you can learn from the Dark Side. So much more than you can imagine."

"No," Cody said resolutely but purposely put a hint of fear into his voice. He followed that with a subtle manipulation of the Force to echo the fake anxiety and immediately felt her jump on it.

"I can feel your fright, young Jedi. What is the last line of your silly code? 'There is no death, only the Force'? No. Not for you. Only death." She lunged at him again and Cody dodged under a whirling strike.

Her arrogance was glowing like a beacon as she lashed out. Cody calmly deflected a new round of blows and he felt the first twinge of frustration from Nayla. He exhaled slowly and felt her anger rise as more of her attacks were harmlessly parried.

_She's nothing but an mindless beast now, _Cody decided. _A living weapon. _He felt pity for what had happened to his Master's former apprentice. His confidence grew but he flooded the Force with negative feelings. Any time now, he hoped, she would become a victim of her own pride and anger and lose her focus just long enough to make a mistake.

Cody's chance came nearly three minutes later when his foot slipped on a patch of ice and he slid awkwardly sideways. Nayla rushed in on him and swung from low to high in hopes of eviscerating him. She overbalanced in her enthusiasm and the strike went slightly wide and Cody blocked it. He immediately spun and landed a disabling backhanded strike to her midsection.

She staggered five steps before falling to her knees and the lightsaber rolled from her hands. Her eyes were full of hatred and pain as she looked up at Cody. She spat a mouthful of deep red blood onto the snow. He tossed her weapon across the roof with a slight wave of his hand.

"I can help you," Cody said as he took a hesitant step forward. "Let me." He moved another meter closer and held his hand out peacefully.

"No," she said as she stained more snow pink. "Remember earlier when I said that you wouldn't live to see daybreak?" She coughed and frothy bubbles slid down the side of her chin.

"That doesn't matter now. I can save you."

"It does matter. I failed to bring you down one way. This is the other," she said with an evil smile as her left hand reached to her belt and touched the green light. Cody heard a faint _click _and jumped back an instant before an explosion ripped the roof apart.

He was thrown backwards through the air and sailed over the edge of the roof and plummeted headfirst. Cody forced his eyes open to see a building rushing at him. He tucked his body into a ball and wrapped the Force around himself just before he slammed into the building. He penetrated the wall and his momentum carried him through the floor and down two further levels. Cody bounced and skidded another ten meters before finally landing in a heap against an interior wall far inside the building. The last thing thing he saw before unconsciousness took him was a small, pale human face.

_The story is going to split into two arcs for a while and I'll be focusing more on Cody's side of things while Zack is off playing pirate. Also, I was certain that I'd mentioned Nayla back in the first chapter but after going back and reading it to make sure I didn't screw anything up with her, I discovered she'd somehow not made it into the story at all. _Mea culpa_ on that. My bad. More editing room errors, I guess. As usual, thanks for reading._

_SI_


End file.
